THE
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
VOL. CXIII.
SEPTEMBER, 1921
No. 678
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CONTENTS.
VOLUME GXIIL APRIL, 1921, TO SEPTEMBER, 1921.
Abercrombie, Lascelles. Theodore
Maynard, ..... 42
Adventures of An Unwilling Pilgrim,
The. James Louis Small, . . 203
Albania. Walter George Smith, . 89
American Capital, Some Literary
Aspects of the. Margaret B.
Downing 489
Americanization of the Negro, The.
T. B. Moroney, S.S.J., . . 577
A Study in Origins Ireland.
Brian P. O'Shasnain, ... 1
Britain, The Roman Legacy to.
Sir Bertram C. A. Windle, LL.D., 444
Broek, Father Van Den. Albert J.
Schimberg, 328
Cardinal Gibbons in His Public
Relations. A lien Sinclair Will, 181
Catholic Women, League of, in Uru-
guay. John P. O'Hara, C.S.C., . 217
Chesterton, The Rightness of G. K.
Marion Couthouy Smith, . . 163
Christ, A New Life of. Albert R.
Bandini, 650
Christianity, H. G. Wells on the
Origin of. Sir Bertram C. A.
Windle, LL.D., . . . .641
Claudel, The Religious Poetry of
Paul. Helen Guerson, . . . 668
Convert, The Disillusionment of a.
Augustin Peregrine, . . . 633
Coign of Vantage, The. L. Wheaton, 13
Coventry Patmore: Points of View.
Frederick Page 380
Dante's Centenary :
Dante and Mysticism. E. Ingram
Waktin 829
Dante and Pastoral Poetry.
Charles Phillips, M.A., . . 804
Dante's Political Theories. J. J.
Rolbiecki 768
Dante and the Franciscans.
Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., . . 792
Dante as a Philosopher. Rt. Rev.
William Turner, D.D., . . 751
Dante the Man. L. Wheaton, . 721
Dante the Monarchist. Hilaire
Belloc . 857
Dante the Theologian. Humphrey
Moynihan, D.D., .... 779
Dante, The Times of. Michael
Williams 848
Encyclical Letter of His Holiness,
Pope Benedict XV. . . .867
Everybody's Dante. By the
Editor 817
"II Dolce Stil Nuovo." Margaret
Munsterberg, .... 735
Dark Ages, From the. Sir Bertram
C. A. Windle, LL.D 73
Delinquency, Recreation and Its Re-
lation to. John O'Connor, . . 465
Disillusionment of a Convert, The.
Augustin Peregrine, . . . 633
Easter, A Memorable. F. Joseph
Kelly, Mus. D., 98
Egoist and Mystic: Joris Karl
Huysmans. George N. Shuster, . 452
Erroneous Theories Concerning the
Functions of the State. John A.
Ryan, D.D 50
Father Van Den Broek. Albert P.
Schimberg 328
Firm Foundations. Henry A. Lap-
pin, Litt.D., 155
Flower of St. John, The. Harriette
Wilbur 389
From the Dark Ages. Sir Bertram
C. A. Windle, LL.D., ... 73
George Meredith. May Bateman, . 585
Gibbons, James Cardinal. William
J. Kerby, Ph.D 145
Grey Nuns, The. R. F. O'Connor, 28
God Became Man, Why. Leslie J.
Walker, S.J., M.A., . 289, 473, 619
Huysmans, Joris Karl: Egoist and
Mystic. George N. Shuster, . 452
In Lonely Ravenna. Joseph Francis
Wickham 659
Ireland A Study in Origins.
Brian P. O'Shasnain, ... 1
James Cardinal Gibbons. William
J. Kerby, Ph.D 145
League of Catholic Women in Uru-
guay, The. John P. O'Hara,
C.S.C 217
Literature, A Living Irish. W. H.
Kent, O.S.C 304
Literature, The Shillalah in English.
Joseph J. Reilly, Ph.D., . . 334
Martial: The Modern Epigrammatist.
Herbert F. Wright, . . . 355
Meredith, George. May Bateman, 585
Negro, The Americanization of the.
T. B. Moroney, S.S.J., . . 577
New Life of Christ, A. Albert R.
Bandini, 650
Pilgrim, The Adventures of an Un-
willing. James Louis Small, . 203
Proper Functiones of the State, The.
John A. Ryan, D.D 169
Ravenna, In Lonely. Joseph Fran-
cis Wickham 659
Recent Events, . 123, 264, 413, 556, 702
Recreation and Its Relation to De-
linquency. John O'Connor, . . 465
Rightness of G. K. Chesterton, The.
Marion Couthouy Smith, . . 163
Religious Poetry of Paul Claudel,
The. Helen Guerson, . . . 668
Reunion and Fusion of the Southern
Slavs. Elisabeth Christitch, . 599
Roman Legacy to Britain, The.
Sir Bertram C. A. Windle, LL.D., 444
St. Columkille, Patriot and Poet.
James F. Cassidy 62
St. John, The Flower of. Harriette
Wilbur 389
St. Mihiel, Stray Memories of.
John J. Finn 348
Scripture, The Study of Holy.
Cuthbert Lattey, S.J 433
Shillalah in English Literature,
The. Joseph J. Reilly, Ph.D., . 334
Social Work, Training for. Fred-
erick Siedenburg, S.J 320
Some Literary Aspects of the Amer-
ican Capital. Margaret B. Down-
ing 489
Southern Slavs, Reunion and Fusion
of the. Elisabeth Christich, . 599
Spanish Fantasies, Thomas Walsh,
His. Hugh Anthony Allen, M.A., 192
State, Erroneous Theories Concern-
ing the Functions of the. John
A. Ryan, D.D 50
State, The Proper Functions of the.
John A. Ryan, D.D 169
Stray Memories of St. Mihiel. John
J. Finn, 348
Study of Holy Scripture, The.
Cuthbert Lattey, S.J 433
Thomas Walsh: His Spanish Fan-
tasies. Hugh Anthony Allen, M.A., 192
CONTENTS
iii
Training for Social Work. Fred-
erick Siedenburg, S.J 320
Uruguay, The League of Catholic
Women in. John P. O'Hara,
C.S.C., . 217
Wells, H. G., on the Origin of
Christianity. Sir Bertram C. A.
Windle, LL.D., . 641
Why God Became Man. Leslie /
Walker, S.J., M.A., . 289, 473, 619
STORIES.
My Little Black Book. Charles C. The Passing of the Chief Charles
Conaty 607 A. Ferguson, . 8 3
The Little Wooden Bowl. Marie The Shadow Before Michael Earls
228 S.J., ' 3 fifi
Antoinette de Roulet,
POEMS.
A Present-Day Saint. L. A. Wal-
ling ford, 472
A Saint's Portrait. ArmeZ O'Connor, 72
Alone. Brian Padraic O'Seasnain, 451
Chivalry. Eleanor C. Shallcross, . 97
Her Name. Edward F. Garesche,
S.J., 202
Molokai. John //. Lowden Potts, 347
Notre Dame Chapelle. Jessie Le-
mont, 327
Pastel. Charles J. Quirk, S.J., . 598
St. Catharine. J. A. Scanlan, . . 41
The Call. Caroline Giltinan, . . 216
The Cardinal's Hat. Francis Car-
fin, 225
The Mountain. Charles L. O'Don-
nell, C.S.C., 606
The Shrine. Harry Lee, . . .236
The Sleeping Beauty. Charles J.
Quirk, S.J., 82
To a Child. Kathryn White Ryan, 168
To Pain. Sister Mary Benvenuta,
O.P 379
Woman of Mists, Ireland. Kathryn
White Ryan 488
WITH OUR READERS.
A Caricature of the Church, . . 431
A Personal Appreciation of Louise
Imogen Guiney, .... 140
"A String of Sapphires," . . . 139
Cardinal Gibbons' Last Interview, 134
Cardinal Gibbons, Tributes to, . 277
Dr. Palmieri Answers Mr. Adler, 574
H. G. Wells Self-Condemned, . . 717
Ireland, Conditions in, . . . 281
Ireland, The Pronouncement of the
Irish Hierarchy, .... 574
Light, Temporal and Eternal, . 137
Man Not His Own, But God's, . 713
Material and Spiritual Aims of
Truth,
Mr. Adler Protests Against Dr.
Godrycz's Views on the Jews, .
Peace,
Praise of An Old Work, .
Problem of the Negro,
References to Catholic Hagiography,
"Should the Church Advertise?" .
The Angel us Fund, ....
The Belgian School System,
The Indefiniteness of Protestant
Faith,
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A Commentary on the New Code of
Canon Law, ..... 116
Adam of Dublin, . . . .263
Adventures Among Birds, . . 253
A Little Book of St. Francis and
His Brothers, 122
A Manual of the Ceremonies of
Low Mass, 122
A Man Who Was a Man, . . .120
American Police Systems, . . 542
Among Italian Peasants, . . 408
An Acreage of Lyrics, . . . 700
Andalusia, 699
Andrew Jackson and Early Ten-
nessee History, 257
A Social and Industrial History of
England, 1815-1918, . . .541
A Spiritual Retreat, . . . .699
A Study of Poetry, . . . .258
A Study of Women Delinquents in
New York State, . . . .105
A Theory of the Mechanism of
Survival, 400
Athenian Tragedy, .... 247
A Tour of America's National Parks, 540
A Woman of The Bentivoglios, . 700
A Year With Christ, . . .256
Caius Gracchus, ..... HI
California Trails, . . . .251
Cartagena and the Banks of Sinu, 689
Catechism of Christian Doctrine, 552
Catholic Thought and Thinkers, . 102
Character and Opinion in the
United States, .... 245
Christianity and Infallibility; Both
or Neither, . . .
Commeiitarium pro Religiosis,
Comparative Religion,
Correspondence of Jean-Baptiste
Carrier, During His Mission in
Brittany,
Devotion to the Sacred Heart, .
Divine Contemplation for All, .
Doctrinal Discourses,
Domicile and Quasi-Domicile, .
Donne's Sermons, .
Early History of Singing,
Efficiency in the United States,
Emerson How to Know Him,
England in Transition,
Enslaved, ...
Essays on Modern Dramatists,
Essays on Poetry,
Essays Speculative and Political, .
Evolution and Social Progress,
Faith and Duty,
Father Allan's Island,
First Communion Days, .
Flame of the Forest,
Foreign Publications,
From Out the Vasty Deep,
From the Trinity to the Eucharist,
Glimpses of South America, .
Half Loaves,
Handbook of Moral Theology,.
Heart Blossoms,
Heredity and Evolution in Plants,
Historic Struggles for the Faith, .
423
286
567
718
283
574
285
430
570
569
263
411
543
114
698
543
<>92
81
694
682
549
684
258
254
695
110
686
104
551
252
262
406
555
693
263
259
548
691
407
237
113
IV
CONTENTS
History of Africa, South of Zambesi,
1505-1795, 117
History of the One Hundred and
Seventh Infantry, .... 404
Hopes for English Religion, . . 411
How We Advertised America, . . 116
In Search of the Soul, . . .397
Ireland and the Early Church, . 547
Ireland in the European System, . 396
Ireland in Insurrection, . . . 541
Irish Catholic Genesis of Lowell, 688
Irish Unionism, . . . .537
Jailed For Freedom, . . . .254
Jake, 697
June Roses for the Sacred Heart, . 410
Kahlekat, 411
Kosciusko, 119
Last Letters from the Living Dead
Man, 687
Le Droit International Public
Positif, . . . . . 547
Letters from a Living Dead Man, 687
Life and Letters, . . . .403
Living Again, 552
Maddalena's Day and Other Sketches, 554
Mary's Praise on Every Tongue, . 122
Meditations on the Litany of the
Sacred Heart Culled From the
Writings of Juliana of Norwich, 262
Morning, Noon and Night, . . 253
Mother Mary Gon/aga, . . . 550
My Life and Friends, . . . 115
Naturalism in English Poetry, . 251
Our Family Affairs, .... 690
Our Great War and the War of the
Ancient Greeks, .... 553
On the Morals of Today, . . . 410
Pamphlet Publications, . . 412, 701
Pardon and Peace, .... 699
Political Summary of the United
States, 408
Presidents and Pies, .... 409
Primitive Society, . . . .683
Princess Salome, .... 697
Principles of Freedom, . . . 698
Psychology and Mystical Experience, 393
Psychology, and Natural Theology, 536
Quicksands of Youth, . . . 406
Recent Developments in European
Thought, 685
Reference History of the \Var, . 411
Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch
Tolstoi, 399
Reputations, 118
Right Royal, 254
Saint Columba of lona ; A Study
of His Life, His Times, and His
Influence, ..... 539
St. Leonard of Port-Maurice, . .691
Satan's Diary, 409
Scientific Theism Versus Material-
ism, 110
Sermons, ...... 119
Sermons and Notes of Sermons, . 553
Social Reconstruction, . . . 249
Social Scandinavia in the Viking
Age, 108
Success in a New Era, . . .113
Surprises of Life, .... 552
Synopsis Additionum et Varia-
tionum in editionc typica Mis-
sal is Romani Factarum, . . 411
Tales of ^Egean Intrigue, . . 545
Talks for the Little Ones, . . 263
The American Empire, . . . 407
The Art of Letters, . . . .540
The Boy Scouts of the Wolf Patrol, 120
The Cathedrals and Churches of
Rome and Southern Italy, . . 538
The Cathedrals of Central Italy, . 538
The Children's Story Garden, . . 548
The Christian Mind, . . . .248
The Church and Labor, . . .241
The Circus, and Other Essays, . 681
The City, 115
The Connecticut Wits, and Other
Essays, 108
The Control of Parenthood, . ..238
The Course of Empire, . . . 120
The Diary of a Forty-Niner, . . 551
The Divine Adventure, . . .692
The Elfin Artist, . . . .109
The Eucharistic Hour, . . .122
The Fellowship of the Picture, . 687
The First Sir Percy, . . . .696
The Foundations of Spiritualism, 544
The Fringe of the Eternal, . . 262
The Gentle Art of Columning, . 411
The Gospel According to St. Mark, 394
The Greatest Failure in All History, 252
The Greenway, 546
The Gulf of Misunderstanding, . 553
The Human Costs of the War, . 688
The Journal of the American Irish
Historical Society, . . .411
The Last Knight, and Other Poems, 395
The Letters of St. Teresa, . . 533
The Life of St. Margaret Mary
Alacoquc, 401
The Loyalist, . . . . .118
The Making of the Reparation and
Economic Section of the Treaty, 246
The Message of Francis Thompson, 689
The Mother of Christ, . . .107
The Narrow House, .... 407
The New Jerusalem, . . . 240
The Noise of the World, . . . 554
The Origin and Problem of Life, . 534
The Palace Beautiful, . . .694
The Paths of Goodness, . . .120
The Poems of Robert Burns, . . 411
The Political Aspects of St. Augus-
tine's City of God, . . .696
The Preliminary Economic Studies
of the War, . . . . .261
The Principal Catholic Practices, 121
The Privilege of Pain, . . .554
The Rule of St. Benedict, . . 679
The Sacred Heart and Mine in Holy
Communion, ..... 122
The St. Gregory Hymnal, . . 121
The Second Reader, . . . .410
The Ship "Tyre," . . . .112
The Sistcrs-in-Law, . . . .549
The Song of Lourdes, . . . 694
The Song of Roland, . . .538
The Spell of Brittany, . . .261
The States of South America, . . 259
The Story Ever New, . . .257
The Strength of the Pines, . . 260
The Teaching of Religion, . . 402
The New World, . . . .262
The United States in Our Own
Times, 1865-1920, . . . .248
The United States in the World War, 103
The Voice of the Negro, . . . 244
The Watch-Dog of the Crown, . 700
The Way of St. James, . . . 106
The Young Seminarian's Manual, 121
Trent, . . . . . . . 678
Tressider's Sister, .... 256
Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle, . 535
Uncle Moses, 695
Vade Mecum for Nurses and Social
Workers, 121
Victoire de Saint-Luc, . . . 550
What I Saw In Russia, . . . 255
Wind and Blue Water, . . .546
Within the Year After, . . .408
THE
jatholie ^
VOL. CXIII. APRIL, 1921 No. 673
IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS.
BY BRIAN P. O'SHASNAIN.
HEN a small and geographically limited area of the
earth's surface is inhabited by several races with
antagonistic religious and economic faiths; when
none of these races have succeeded in submerging
the others, and when all are passionately aware
of their identity and importance, it is evident that a problem
is created which cannot be solved by the rough and ready
method of military conquest by the dominant race. Such a
problem is Ireland. Its military conquest by England in ages
past resulted only in intensified and embittered resistance,
until now the whole world seems likely to learn the dimen-
sions of the Irish question.
The English expedition of Henry II., which passed into
Ireland in the twelfth century had no corroding doubts as to
the future. Here was a land ready to be taken. The matter
was really very simple. The invaders first received sanction
from a Pope, who happened to be an Englishman. Then was
assembled a company of gentlemen adventurers, each followed
by his retainers and the rest was a matter of fighting. It
was an age of freebooters.
The English adventurers found a civilization radically dif-
ferent from their own. Already in England the Norman Con-
quest had imposed the continental feudal tenure on the native
COPYRIGHT. 1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. CXIII. 1
2 IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
Saxons. Each man under such a system held his land only
i>y virtue of service rendered to the order higher than his own.
The King was the keystone of the social arch. In Ireland, how-
ever, the Gaelic commonwealth was based on tribal ownership
of land. The Chief might call upon his men to follow him into
a military adventure. He and his clan might take the lives
of the neighboring tribesmen, but without appropriating the
lands of the tribe to which they belonged. That was a com-
munity possession. The "common" of English towns and of
our own, represents the last vestige of this tradition. An Amer-
ican who studies the tribal civilization of the Indians can
observe the same tenure in an even more primitive form than
that of the Irish. Tribal communism makes war for prisoners,
slaves, horses, in fact for all the products of human industry,
but, except where an inferior tribe is annihilated and alto-
gether displaced, the victor does not usually appropriate the
tribal lands of the vanquished. Irish civilization, limited in
area to one homogeneous community, had evolved a basic land
system which was pre-feudal and a code of laws, called the
Brehon laws, which were defined and carried out into meticu-
lous detail by an ancient and highly venerated corps of judges
and lawgivers.
This Irish tribal civilization allowed much room for indi-
vidual adventurers. The population was kept down by inter-
tribal wars and by struggles with viking corsairs. Four pro-
vincial kings in Ireland however acknowledged the overlord-
ship of a high-king, who for centuries had ruled from Tara,
and a triennial council there had given promise of developing
into a permanent legislature. The country, however, had
suffered much from Danish incursions and from the mad am-
bitions of big and little chiefs. The invaders from England
had little that was good to say about their new home, but that
was to be expected. They could not help paying tribute to the
physical development of the Irish. On that score we have the
words of Giraldus Cambrensius, who was with the little army.
He found grievous faults in Ireland. To him it was the wild
west, uncouth, uncivilized, needing to be brought to order by
the Norman nobility and organized after the manner of Eng-
land. He was horrified at the gay, disorderly, fighting, singing
country that he found. The civilization of the Irish seemed
mere barbarism to this gentleman adventurer, this scribe in
1921.] IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS 3
armor, but man, in Ireland, compelled his admiration. He
wrote: "In Ireland man retains all his majesty. Nature alone
has molded the Irish, and, as if to show what she can do, has
given them countenances of exquisite color, and bodies of
great beauty, symmetry and strength."
With such material the Irish chiefs believed themselves
ready for war. They could hardly realize that a more formid-
able foe than the Dane was at hand the Northman, disciplined
by five centuries of continental warfare, who had become first
Norman and was now becoming English. He had learned to
build stone castles in France. It went hard with the country
that was once dotted with these impregnable fortresses from
which horsemen, completely clad in mail, could issue at any
time to overawe a whole country. The Saxon had submitted
to them and had girdled England with the moated keeps of
his new lords. There the conquest was completed within four
or five years. In Ireland it was hardly complete in five cen-
turies.
The Irish tried the edges of their axes and spears on the
Norman mail. They found it desperate work, and the native,
whose dislike of body armor made him willing to fight in a
linen shirt, had at last to admit that he was no match for
horsemen armed in proof. King Henry's knights received the
submission of those Irish chiefs that his men fought and con-
quered. The others paid no heed to the English King or his
men. Thpugh newcomers were tolerated, as the Danes had
been a hard necessity the hope survived that a united
Ireland would presently cast them out. Thus for centuries
following that first landing, the tide of conquest ebbed and
flowed. The assimilative power of the native life closed
around the invaders. England was far away from them
farther in days' journeyings than America is today. The chil-
dren of the settlers necessarily learned to speak Irish from
their native nurses and playmates, and the second generation
were likely to be hunting or hawking or playing chess in Irish,
taking a full share in the life of the rough, but attractive, land
they had come to conquer.
Sober statesmanship across the Channel was horrified at
this. The Crown had the title to Ireland, but the title had litt
reality. The King's Writ did not run in most of the country,
while the people carried on their affairs according to the
4 IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
ancient communal laws. Only a small district around Dublin,
called the Pale, was permanently secure, and even this on
occasion was raided by the wild Irish. Ireland was not civil-
ized by this conquest. Rather it was de-civilized. A foreign
chaos was superimposed on the native disorders.
So matters stood until those struggles that history calls the
Wars of Religion changed the map of Europe. Then a new
bitterness came to Ireland. King William III. completed a real
military conquest of the whole island in 1691. The economic
base was cut from under the tribal system of landholding by
enormous confiscations. The native Irish by the hundred
thousands were dispossessed. They could only return to their
homes as despised tenants. Hundreds of thousands had been
slain, deported to the West Indies on slave ships or driven to
the wild lands of Connaught to pick up a wretched living from
lonely glens and barren hills. This was the foundation of
the modern Irish problem. Ireland could, to a certain degree,
assimilate the Normans who were few in numbers and held
the same Catholic faith as the natives. She could not assimi-
late the enormous disciplined armies of land-hungry soldiers,
lawyers and parsons which Protestant England flung upon
her now.
The Gaelic communal land system was thus destroyed, but
the Gaelic culture and tradition survived among the people.
Ireland was conquered in a military sense, but the great mass
of the people still spoke Irish and the conquerors were further
away than they had ever been from a meeting with the will
of the natives. Also the peasant had a new passion in addition
to old grievances. He wanted his land back.
The Protestant aristocracy, to whose ruling the country
was now entrusted, created in Dublin a Parliament in which a
working majority of the seats were carried in the pockets of a
few great Protestant families. The Irish, who were five-sixths
of the country, were Catholics and, therefore, totally unrepre-
sented. The status of the native Irishman was defined by the
Penal Laws which Burke has called "a machine of wise and
elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debase-
ment in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from
the perverted ingenuity of man." 1
1 Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, 1792.
1921.] IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS 5
It was from such a Parliament that Pitt bought for cash
the majority he needed for the Act of Union in 1800 an Act
which merely removed the political scene from Dublin to
London, leaving the Catholic Irish five-sixths in their inferior
status as before, and leaving the land question untouched.
The condition of Ireland between the conquest of William III.
and its Union with England was so deplorable that Green, in
his History of the English People, says : "The history of Ireland
from its conquest by William III. up to this time, is one which
no Englishman can recall without shame. Since the surrender
of Limerick every Catholic Irishman, and there were five
Catholics to every Protestant, had been treated as a stranger
and a foreigner in his own country. . . in other words, the
immense majority of the people of Ireland were simply hewers
of wood and drawers of water to their Protestant masters, who
still looked upon themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of
their Scotch or English extraction, and who regarded the name
of Irishman' as an insult."
As to the methods by which the Union was brought about,
Green says: "The assent of the Irish Parliament was bought
with a million in money and with a liberal distribution of
pensions and peerages to its members."
It was, perhaps, a century and a half before this time
that a hero landed in Ireland whose influence was bound to
outweigh all the achievements of legendary chiefs and kings.
The Potato was that hero. Modern history is increasingly
concerned, with the profound, but generally unnoted, influence
on human affairs of economic and geographic factors. The
Spaniards are believed to have discovered the potato in cul-
tivation in the Andes, and we may be sure that to them it was
just one more vegetable. Gold was the thing worth seeking.
What would they think if they could know that the value of a
single season's potato crop in the United States is greater than
the worth of all the gold taken from all the mines of Spanish
America since the discovery?
The Irish peasantry, their best lands taken from them by
the Confiscations, or what they retained burdened by enormous
rents, found the potato a godsend. They could live off pota-
toes while selling grains, dairy products and meats to earn the
money due the landlord for rent, while, perhaps, investing a
wee bit for improvements. Between 1801 and 1841 Ireland's
6 IRELANDA STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
population increased from 5,395,456 to 8,175,124. The popula-
tion of Scotland increased in even greater proportion. Both
countries were sharing in the growth made possible by the in-
dustrial revolution that had come to ,pass through the intro-
duction of machinery on a great scale. But since the Irish
peasant depended almost exclusively on the potato for his food,
when this crop failed, the country was smitten by the most
awful famine of modern times in Europe. Francis Hackett,
in his Ireland, says: "Experts had predicted the Famine. It
had been foreseen; it had even been reckoned inevitable."
The Government, however, with fatal ineptitude, failed to
make adequate provision for the coming hunger. Between
1845 and 1849, 729,033 people died of starvation, and yet during
the same period Britain allowed the export out of Ireland of
572,485 head of cattle, 839,118 sheep, 699,021 pigs, 2,532,839
quarters of oats, 1,821,091 hundredweights of oatmeal, 455,256
quarters of wheat, 1,494,852 hundredweights of wheat meal.
After the famine came the Great Exodus, the like of which
Europe had not seen in centuries. While every other Euro-
pean country gained in population, fertile Ireland lost nearly
4,000,000 people in sixty years. English liberal thinkers have
always contended that a government in the interest of Ireland
would have forestalled such a national disaster. In a series of
articles written for the Daily Mail and the Morning Post in
1907, Sidney Brooks, an English publicist, wrote: "And the
failure still continues unbroken. What indictment of British
rule could be more damning than that preferred by the emi-
gration figures. In sixty years the population of Ireland has
fallen by all but 4,000,000, and the drain goes on unceasingly."
The Famine broke the back of the tenacious Gaelic-speak-
ing culture. Poets, singers, harpists, and old people of all
sorts, who were the repositories of the ancient wisdom, per-
ished by the thousands of starvation and fever. With their
dying passed the musical speech of the Gael the speech that
the Roman legions first heard from the lips of the proud war-
riors in Gaul, and which was once spoken over nearly all of
Europe. It passed from the last large area which it held in
modern Europe. It was to return again, painfully learned, in
later years, with the revival of nationality by the Gaelic
League and Sinn Fein.
After the famine came the Land Agitation, which finally
1921.] IRELANDA STUDY IN ORIGINS 7
led to the passing of the Land Bills. At a cost of 185,000,000
the peasants were to buy out the landlords. A good part
of this sum has been paid by now, and tenant farming is
rapidly passing. Va> victis! Ireland, having paid all the costs
of conquest, is now buying out the conquerors' descendants!
The condition in which the receding tide of conquest
leaves Ireland cannot be more vividly stated than in the fol-
lowing tables:
Population Per Square Mile
Ireland 1911 4,390,219 135
Scotland 1911 4,760,904 160
Ireland's share of defectives is the highest of the three
kingdoms :
Ireland Scotland
Insane (1911) 24,394 18,636
Blind (1900) 4,263 3,253
The poverty of Ireland, as compared with Scotland, is
illustrated below :
Ireland Scotland
Income Tax (1915) 2,182,000 1,326,000
Gross Income (1913)
Houses 5,419,000 21,202,000
Land 9,699,000 5,713,000
Railway Receipts (1913).. 4,902,000 14,900,000
Postoffice Savings (1913).. 13,161,895 8,008,985
Trustee Savings (1913)... 2,652,018 20,114,443
The government of Ireland is enormously expensive,
judged even by American standards. With a population of
4,300,000 the country has to support a Lord Lieutenant, who
with his household receives an appropriation of 45,000 per
year. The Lord Chancellor receives 6,000 per year, the Lord
Chief Justice 5,000, the Lord Justices 4,000 each, the Jus-
tices 3,500, Judicial Commissioners of the Land Commission
3,500 and 3,000. The Boyal Irish Constabulary, which has
no parallel in England, Scotland or Wales, accounts for 1,500,-
000 per year. "The Constabulary," says a Permanent Under
Secretary for Ireland, "is really an imperial force. It is a
semi-military force and it may be almost considered as an
army of occupation rather than as a police force." The people
of Ireland do not appoint this force nor have they any say as
8 IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
to its discipline or disposal. It is a permanent army of con-
quest.
Ireland's Ulster problem is similar to the problem of the
revolting American Colonies in 1776. The Continental Con-
gress had to face the fact that virtually the entire official class
were loyalists. It is estimated by Tyler, in his Literary History
of the American Revolution, that one-third of the people of the
Colonies were loyal to England, and that before the war was
over 2,000,000 loyalists had gone into exile or died. It is a sin-
gular fact, however, that Ulster has twice organized for armed
revolt during the modern history of Ireland once during the
war with the American Colonies when the people of Ulster led
Ireland in arming a force of 100,000 volunteers, and wrested
from Parliament the legislative independence of Ireland. The
second time was during the period between 1911 and 1914
when the Imperial Parliament at Westminster was preparing
to pass the Home Rule Bill. Ulster, under the leadership of
Sir Edward Carson, a Dublin lawyer, prepared to resist this
legislation by force of arms. There was a brisk trade in arms
with Germany in those exciting days.
Captain Craig, an Ulster Unionist M. P., wrote to the
Morning Post, London, January 9, 1911 :
There is a spirit spreading abroad which I can testify to
from my personal knowledge that Germany and the Ger-
man Empire would be preferred to the rule of John Red-
mond, Patrick Ford and the Molly Maguires.
The Irish Churchman (Protestant), in its November 14,
1913, issue, printed the following:
It may not be known to the rank and file of Unionists
that we have the offer of aid from a powerful Continental
Monarch, who, if Home Rule is forced on the Protestants of
Ireland, is prepared to send an army sufficient to release
England from any further trouble in Ireland, by attaching
it to his dominion, believing as he does that if our King
breaks his coronation oath by signing the Home Rule Bill,
he will by so doing have forfeited his claim to rule Ireland.
And should our King sign the Home Rule Bill, the Prot-
estants of Ireland will welcome this continental deliverer
as their forefathers under similar circumstances did once
before.
1921.] IRELANDA STUDY IN ORIGINS 9
Major Crawford, a prominent Ulsterman, said:
If they were put out of the Union ... he would infinitely
prefer to change his allegiance right over to the Emperor of
Germany or any one else who had got a proper and stable
government.
On September 24, 1913, a Provisional Government was
formed in Ulster. Volunteers were enrolled and a completely
equipped army, supposed to number 100,000, was built up. Sir
Edward Carson said:
In the event of this proposed parliament being thrust
upon us, we solemnly pledge ourselves not to recognize its
authority. I do not care twopence whether it is treason or
not!
On March 14, 1914, General Gough and fifty-seven officers
resigned from the British forces. They had been ordered to
hold themselves in readiness for disarming Ulster. Their resig-
nations were not accepted, but there was no move made against
Ulster.
On April 6, 1914, the Home Rule Bill passed its second
reading. On April 24th 35,000 rifles and 300,000 cartridges,
bought in Hamburg, were landed at an Ulster port and dis-
tributed to 12,000 men. Then southern Ireland, believing the
Government incapable of protecting Home Rule, began to arm.
Also James Larkin, the Dublin Labor Leader, and James Con-
nolly, his associate, created the Citizen Army, a labor organiza-
tion, which drilled to protect the status of the Dublin workers.
Thus, in the summer of 1914, there were five armed forces in
Ireland, as follows: The Ulster Volunteers; The Irish Volun-
teers; The Citizen Army; The Royal Irish Constabulary; The
British Regulars.
Is it any wonder that the German military authorities be-
lieved in the civil war that seemed imminent in the British
Isles? The summer of 1914, which found Ireland an armed
camp, passed in a long foreboding until that day when the
Great War burst on the world. When England declared war
Redmond offered the southern volunteers to the Allied cause.
He offered a blank check which the Government was to fill,
in the proportion that it won the confidence of Ireland. Red-
10 IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
mond believed that the Home Rule Act should be at once put
into operation, placing Ireland by England's side as a willing
volunteer. This was not done, and in the recruiting campaign
which followed there were blunders. Old suspicions flared
up. "At the most critical period of the War," declared Lloyd
George, "some stupidities, which at times looked almost like
malignance, were perpetrated in Ireland and were beyond
belief. It is very difficult to recover a lost opportunity of that
kind where national susceptibilities have been offended and
original enthusiasm killed." Recruiting, which had begun
auspiciously for the British, died down in south Ireland after
a year or so.
Sinn Fein, which had sprung up as a cultural movement
designed to secure independence within the Empire, developed
into a militant force, and a union of its energies with those of
the Citizen Army precipitated the Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin,
but the republic which it proclaimed was quickly suppressed.
The ideals of Sinn Fein, however, were such as to touch the
imagination of Ireland, and the country outside six counties in
Ulster has within the past few years organized an immense na-
tionalistic conspiracy to replace the British movement by a
free and sovereign Irish state. The sentiment for a republic
was revealed by the following figures from the General Election
of December, 1918, when the question of a republic was the
issue before the people: Constituencies won: Sinn Fein, 73;
Nationalist, 6; Unionist, 26. Total votes cast: Sinn Fein, 971,-
945; Nationalist, 235,306; Unionist, 308,713.
The Nationalist Party was thus almost wiped out in favor
of the Sinn Fein or, to put it more precisely, the ideal of a
republic had displaced the ideal of a limited self-determination
within the Empire. In this election the half of Ulster, in area,
was captured by Sinn Fein or Nationalist, leaving six counties
or parts of counties standing pat for Union.
In 1919 and 1920 armed forces of Sinn Feiners began to
drive the Royal Irish Constabulary from their barracks all
over southern Ireland. As the police retired to the big towns,
their former barracks were burned and the arms found, con-
fiscated. By summer of 1920 a large area of Ireland had
passed from under the English law and was being adminis-
tered by Sinn Fein courts and police. It was then that the
English Government began to recruit a body of auxiliary
1921.] IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS ll
police, men who were said to be paid the high wage of a pound
per day for the desperate work of reconquering the areas lost
to the Grown. These are the Black and Tans, so called because
of a peculiarity of their uniform. The resistance of the Sinn
Fein Volunteers to these Black and Tans brought about the
burnings of villages, towns and cities, as well as the destruction
of manufacturing plants and cooperative creameries as re-
prisals for the losses of the auxiliary police. In the struggle
between these two armed bodies of desperate men there is
danger that Ireland will be reduced to a desert, her towns
burned, her manufacturing establishments and creameries
destroyed by reckless mercenaries, her people driven from the
ways of peaceful production to the business of killing and pil-
lage.
Recent developments in Ireland have only intensified the
passion of her people for self-determination. The whole
world is now applauding the little nation that can offer such
magnificent resistance to an all-powerful oppressor. The roll
of national heroes grows longer week by week. America
is impressed by the proportion of educated men poets, teach-
ers, professors, who have suffered the ultimate penalty for the
sake of their country. The latest official murder has struck
down the mayor of Limerick brutally slain in the presence
of his wife, at night, at a time when the English-enforced Cur-
few prevented aid from reaching him. These are deeds
that make the sensitive Englishman hang his head in
shame. But no shame can penetrate the pitiless brutality of
the Imperial Parliament which on every occasion votes over-
whelming confidence in the Government which is now respon-
sible for a programme of sheer bloody terror without parallel
since the days of '98.
An English member of the Peace Council, John Maynard
Keynes (who has since written an illuminating book, The
Economic Consequences of the Peace), describes the members
of the present Parliament as a set of hard-faced men who
look as if they had made the most they could out of the War-
and surely their ferocious attitude toward Ireland justifies him
in this judgment penned nearly two years ago. Unless the
majority of Englishmen realize that the world is judging them
by Ireland, unless some means is found of healing the flow of
blood there, of stopping the blind brutality of the mercenary
12 IRELAND A STUDY IN ORIGINS [April,
troops, the reputation of England will be fatally impaired
throughout the world. In the last analysis the English system
of Empire depends on a certain prestige, a belief that even if
the system is bad, it is better than other systems. But how
long will Englishmen be able to sustain that tradition when
the news from Ireland goes into all the market places of the
East, when the brown men learn that there is insurrection at
home and that the Prime Minister is barricaded behind sand-
bags and barbed wire?
When will England learn that Freedom cannot be sup-
pressed in Ireland or elsewhere today after the methods of
the eighteenth century. The great instrumentalities of the
telegraph, the wireless, the printing-press and popular educa-
tion have made it impossible to commit political crimes with-
out exposure. There could be no such thing as a partition
of Poland today by even so formidable a trio of monarchs as
once committed that crime. There can be no partition of
Ireland in any real sense. The hard-faced Parliament and
the facile Prime Minister have these things to learn. Mean-
while on a high stage, in view of the whole world, in the cold
and pitiless publicity of a hostile press, England is playing
the tragic and brutal role of policeman and jailer of those who
dare assert their right to the liberties that half a million Eng-
lishmen have died for. This contradiction is too great for
nature to sustain; it is too great for the Empire to sustain.
Thus Ireland is for today the test of the reality of the English
claim to an enduring and humane civilization. Judged by that
test the reality is not there. England, as represented by her
Government, is neither civilized nor humane.
Let us hope that before it is too late, there will be a change
of heart, a change of policies and that Ireland will walk the
path of freedom and self-determination, a sister nation with
England. Then we may hope to witness once more a revival
of that ancient Gaelic spirit which has done so much for
Europe, and which has kept alive, even through the arid years
of modern material civilization, somewhat of the ancient feel-
ing of reverence for nature and of respect for human
freedom.
THE COIGN OF VANTAGE.
BY L. WHEATON.
Duncan. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
Banquo. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate.
Macbeth, Act I., Scene 6.
jHATEVER excellence may be in purely academic
I criticism, it is not rash to say that only the Cath-
olic can penetrate the innermost meaning of liter-
ature, can pluck out the heart of the mystery of art,
or can interpret history truly, 1 because to know
Christ in the Breaking of Bread is to have power to discern
all things in relation to Life. If it should be found that we who
have so much to give, give so little, that we do not exploit our
own capacities, that a portion of the Catholic world is
still mentally narrowed to eighteenth century conditions, then
that state of things must seriously hamper the education of
those eager young minds which find themselves far more at
home in their own century and atmosphere.
These are they whose faith is so often shaken in the first
agonizing encounter with modern intellectual difficulties. The
unimaginative girl of "common sense" (and such sense is
only common after all) is easily provided for and safeguarded
in the sphere of social work and general usefulness; but the
girl of keener intelligence, whose interests and pleasures are
intellectual and artistic, this more valuable yet more vulner-
able product of modern civilization, is too often unprepared
for the disintegrations of sensible faith, possibly occurring
1 This paper was written some months before Mr. Hilaire Belloc's admirable
articles on the teaching of history appeared in the Tablet of September 18th and 25th,
1920.
14 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
under the influence of attractive non-Catholic social inter-
course and the abundance of rationalistic literature to be found
in any library. It is true of all life that only by exercise can
it be kept healthy. A law-abiding attitude towards the com-
mandments of God and the Church is a necessary condition of
our Catholic existence; but, to certain types of mind, a right
reasonableness should be opposed to wrong rationalism; il-
lumination is needed as well as information a lighting up of
dry facts.
The intellect clamors for its own uses along the line
of clearer vision, for a more vivid realization of what the soul
owns and believes, for the "sense of something far more deeply
interfused" than the bare formularies of religion. The grow-
ing girl is pining to get into the light from the shades of her
prison-house; to discover the relation of the splendid human-
ity which she feels to be her own, and recognizes in those she
loves best, to that supernatural life which is so glibly talked
about and left so unillustrated; and she speechlessly appeals
to us to dig again the wells the Philistines have filled. She
already knows about the Way and the Truth and the Life from
the study of the Gospel; but this most inviting and interesting
part of her syllabus is only too anxiously connected with the
ensuing examination and seems to be correlated to little else
in her education. She knows so much more about Our Lord
than she knows Him. This defect, which again is an outcome
of our conventional eighteenth century Catholicity, should be
met and dealt with, as far as may be, by the teacher of litera-
ture. She holds the important field of first impressions. These
impressions must be true and, let us use the magic word, prac-
tical; for it must be owned that sensible as we are in relation
to matters that pertain to time and the things that belong to it,
we are most unpractical in that important part of education
which bears strictly on eternity. If we can secure the mental
confidence of our pupils, not only during the period of un-
awakened youth, but for those later unprotected years which
follow, then we are, in the deepest sense, successful. That was
a happy moment in a nun's life when she read from the letter
of an old girl : "Thank you above all for making me love those
two best things : St. John's Gospel and Poetry."
Yet it is in the teaching of literature that there have been
many most manifest failures. Lord Byron wrote in a letter to
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 15
a friend who expostulated with him for sending Allegra to a
convent :
It has always appeared to me that the moral defect in
Italy does not proceed from a conventual education, because,
to my certain knowledge, they come out of their convents
innocent even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state of
society into which they are plunged on coming out of them.
It is like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then
taking him to the sea and desiring him to swim.
The absence of all sense of humor in this solemn (and not
particularly grammatical) estimate from the greatest satirist
of his age, is only perhaps less obvious than the lack of humor
in quoting it! Yet, with that curious sanity of judgment which
Byron shows in detached moments, he has stated the case, not
so much for the morality of our time as for its mentality.
The exigencies of the War and of later social conditions,
the swift march of the feministic movement and all that goes
with it, have schooled the present-day girl to know and ward
off the perils to which her active share in external work ex-
poses her; she may or may not have lost much of what was
called her "bloom," and with it, something of her charm, but
she is quite able to take care of herself if she chooses. The
thoughtful, book-loving girl, however, is indeed too often
brought from her mountain height, thrown into the sea, and
told to swim. What can be done to prevent the young misery
which so soon encompasses these unseasoned minds? Cannot
we introduce a mental swimming-course into our mountain
system of education? Such exercise, carefully conducted by
the guardians of these cloistered heights (and they must be
good swimmers themselves or they cannot know the art)
will ensure a certain mental experience which may anticipate
the first shocks of later surprises and frustrate their effects.
This cannot be achieved by impossible scrutiny of the army
of negations that makes up the infidel creed (for, by a sort of
paradox, denial of faith becomes faith in denial), but by a
vivid presentment of the great Affirmations of Life, so that
these precious souls may feel and know the Realities so vitally
and profoundly, that the spaces of the mind and imagination
are already filled with substantial Truth and Beauty before
the negations can force an entrance. To quote from an ilium-
16 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
inating article 2 in The Dublin Review on the most affirmative
of modern poets: "Affirmation is the health of life." The
fault of the unpreparedness that leads only too often to a fail-
ure in affirmation, lies less in the teaching of doctrine than in
the teaching of literature, which is, after all, truth in terms of
art, thought in relation to life and life is what matters. A girl
will listen to her religious instruction with a kind of detached
attention that divides the Sunday from the week. She is inter-
ested, reverent, but is unconsciously pigeon-holing this half-
hour as a thing apart from the rest of her day. This is the
ultimate result of that spirit of the Reformation, of Puritanism,
which we have noted as still influencing our Catholic attitudes.
It is the special province of the teacher of literature to break
down the artificial barrier and bring religion and life into
their normal conjunction. Her lesson must come out of the
light and warmth and vision of her own heart or it will be
mere moralizing. To point the moral and adorn the tale is
to defeat the lesson's own ends. The correlative method (in-
stinct is a better word) should belong to the earlier years of
a child's education. Familiarity with stories of pagan myths
will help to preclude the unnatural Protestant ideal, so para-
lyzing to a living sense of art and beauty and life in its affirma-
tive aspects. Father Martindale's Goddess of Ghosts and some
of the lovely chapters of In God's Nursery can be made to older
girls a liberal education, and a mental emancipation of a most
Catholic character.
The naturally or traditionally pious girl may not need this
appeal, she has her own beautiful gift; but to one in whose
veins flow the diluted currents from a soul-starved ancestry,
who needs every intellectual, as well as supernatural, help
to keep her heart and her faith happy, whose imagination
is alert and responsive: to her and she is the type of
thousands the right approach to literature, especially
to English literature, is of paramount importance. This is
where, above all, we must be practical in the widest and
deepest sense of the word. I once attended a lecture given in
a great English university by a woman whose profession was
literature, but whose cult was Theosophy. In this particular
university, as perhaps in any other, it is bad form to introduce
religious or even spiritual points of view in the strictly aca-
J "Coventry Patmore," by Osbert Burdett, October, 1919.
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 17
demic lecture, and anything like Catholic insinuation, even in
ordinary conversation, is proscribed. I, therefore, concluded
that this lady was breaking bounds, when, in a lecture on
Matthew Arnold, she gave us to understand that as he was in-
tellectually and spiritually superior to "nous autres" (there
were present three nuns and several Catholic girls) his ideas
were not to be ignored. She made this so significant that we
were obviously snubbed. "If only," she said regretfully, "he
had lived into our time he would have found what he wanted."
This would seem to be the Theosophy of the twentieth century.
She proceeded to read, slowly and solemnly, "Obermann Once
More," closing the book, without comment, at
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.
It was sententious in spite of the assumed detachment of voice
and manner. Still, I glanced uneasily round the room. One of
the French nuns, I noticed earlier in the hour, had put down
her pen indignantly and refused to take any more notes; the
"Syrian stars" caused her to turn and give me a look of blaz-
ing, affirmative Breton wrath. The attitude of our girls, too,
was disapproving; yet, I wondered whether the destructive,
though weak, appeal had not done some harm. The student
who sat next to me exclaimed enthusiastically : "Isn't Miss
adorable? She lectures so charmingly." I replied that she
was certainly fluent, but I thought she did not altogether
understand some important aspects of her subject, and that it
seemed to me bad taste to introduce her religious ideas into a
lecture. "Oh, but Matthew Arnold is her strong point,
you know isn't he fascinating? so cold and so classical?"
She was a sweet young creature, and I hardly think she took it
very seriously. "Dr. C calls him a 'sentimental chap,' and I
think he is right," I replied unconcernedly as we separated.
There is a rather interesting sequel to this little conversation,
too long for insertion here, but I realized vividly by that morn-
ing's experience that it is for us to be first in the field and to
give the true interpretation and the right impression before
such an episode could have the chance of dimming, even for
a miserable moment, the shining contentment of a young girl's
faith. It has been a real advantage that such a book as Mat-
thew Arnold's second series of Essays in Criticism has been
VOL. GXIII. 2
18 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
set for Oxford Higher Local English of 1920. The chapters on
"The Study of Poetry," on "Amie!" and "Tolstoi" force the
Catholic teacher to offer something real and affirmative in
place of such propositions as these:
"The future of poetry is immense . . . There is not a
creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which
is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition
which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has ma-
terialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has
attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing
it. But for poetry, the idea is everything; the rest is a
world of illusion . . ." The best poetry will be found to
have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us as
nothing else can.
So much of this entire essay is true that the false part carries
greater weight. I think that a determined encounter with this
particular author can be made, an excellent seasoning of the
young mind, as well as an education to the teacher; for he is
often right in his perceptions; and his fastidiousness, his love
of excellence, his high and true estimate of the immense im-
portance of poetry, will help us to perceive and to slay the
Philistine who has made himself far too much at home within
our own gates. Poetry is important. I am convinced more
and more that a love of it will keep our intellectual girls happy
and interested and informed in a more vital sense than can the
study of any secular subject. For Poetry is not secular; it
belongs to regions of inspiration and the exclusiveness of God's
individual gifts.
It need not be difficult to emphasize what is true and what
is false in the writer we have been discussing. The message
of his prose has a definite value as far as his high standard of
art and criticism is concerned, but his poetic message never
gets beyond the doubtful comfort of "Calm's not life's crown,
though calm is well." Seated on the brow of the hill that rises
beyond Ferry Hinksey and commands one of the loveliest
views of Oxford, one naturally reads Thyrsis, looks down upon
the dreaming spires and falls under that spell of aching sweet-
ness and regret of that sense of the past which clings to the
gray walls like their own ivy. But because it is a spell, the
thoughtful gazer peers into its meaning to discover the secret
of its lovely unreality. The soft haze resting cloud-like over
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 19
the "adorable dreamer" is like a veil over a beautiful face,
enhancing rather than hiding its charm; yet one's healthier
instinct is to question this very charm as an illusion, and with
clearness of vision to see it as it is.
Twilight and evening-star have their lure, but life and
growth belong to the day and the unmitigated sunshine. The
clear azure of perfect Truth, the definiteness of Light, the per-
sistent emphasis of the present, with its practical spiritual ob-
ligations, may not have, in a human way, the subtle fascina-
tion of the dreaminess of things; but one is manifestly glamour,
the other belongs to reality. Oxford, as she is, embodies all
that is best and most attractive in Protestant and Agnostic
England. The delicate half-tones of half-truths, the brooding
mists, the fine incompleteness of her later meaning and mes-
sage all the haunting delight of the gloaming all this must
have been hard to relinquish for those whose vision and con-
science beckoned them to the Faith from whose high noon of
truth Oxford drew her first life. One who knew her as per-
haps none other has known her, who felt the seductiveness of
her thrall, has written in the bitter sweetness of his memory
of her as the embodiment of that Via Media which had kept
him far from home:
O mother of saints! O school of the wise! O nurse of
the heroic, of whom went forth, in whom have dwelt
memorable names of old to spread the truth abroad, or to
cherish and illustrate it at home ! O thou, from whom sur-
rounding nations lit their lamps ! O virgin of Israel ! where-
fore dost thou sit on the ground and keep silence, like one
of the foolish women who were without oil on the coming
of the Bridegroom?
"Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down; Sharon is like a
wilderness, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits."
... O my mother, whence is this unto thee that thou hast
good things poured upon thee and canst not keep them, and
bearest children, yet darest not own them? Why hast thou
not the skill to use their services, nor the heart to rejoice
in their love? How is it that whatever is generous in pur-
pose, and tender or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy
promise, falls from thy bosom and finds no home within
thine arms? . . . Thine own offspring, . . . who love thee
and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear, as
though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence; at
20 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
thou dost but endure, as if they had no claim but on thy
patience, self-possession, and vigilance, to be rid of them as
easily as thou mayest. Thou makest them "stand all the
day idle" as the very condition of thy bearing with them.
This passionately tender indictment stands over against the
mild apostrophe of the apostle of culture as a living voice in
contrast with a delicate echo :
Beautiful City! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by
the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene !
"There are our young barbarians, all at play!" And yet,
steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to
the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last
enchantment of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford,
by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the
true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection to beauty,
in a word, which is only truth seen from another side? . . .
Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic ! Who
hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and
to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines: home of
lost causes and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
impossible loyalties! what example could ever so inspire
us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves? . . . Appari-
tions of a day, what is our puny warfare compared with the
warfare which this queen of romance has been waging
against them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone?
With the iteration peculiar to him the apostle of culture
rings the changes on the hateful word and beats his insistent
message out in a mournful message all his own. In a small
octagonal room of the oldest house in Oxford a quiet warfare
for Truth in its literary and historic aspects is being waged by
sons of the University who are of the ancient Faith. The lec-
tures delivered in the "Octagon" are an evidence that the heart
of the original Oxford still beats true in secret.
For there are Philistines and Philistines, and there is a
deeper culture of Sweetness and Light than that which belongs
to the circumscribed realm of human art and intelligence.
The poet of the "wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old world
pain" never moved out of the gloaming of his own mild, pes-
simistic sentiment. That other son of Oxford, who had scented
afar the fragrance of life, because he longed and prayed for
its fullness, determined at no matter what heart-aching cost,
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 21
to tear himself from the twilight spell, and to live in the vulgar
radiance of the noonday sun which alone gives fruitfulness.
"Dover Beach" and "Lead, Kindly Light!" are both poems
written in the dark, yet one leads to that terrible portal over
which is inscribed,
Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate,
while the other guides us out of the dark wood "to see again
the stars."
It may be by some such sharp contrasts as these that the
girl of imagination and deeper feelings can be stirred to some
vision of her own, and a first impression made that at least
tends to be constructive.
It might not be out of place to quote here some passages
from the letter of a nun, who after a long sojourn in England,
returned to the United States: "There is a noticeable increase
in the manifestations of Catholicity since 1907. Then it was
becoming more and more conspicuous and important; now it is
popular and powerful. I discovered this while I was waiting
in the Custom House dock for inquisition and judgment. I
was not long left in suspense. A gold-braided official took me
respectfully under his wing and, in an unmistakably Celtic
accent, promised me he would 'see me through it all.' I was
passed from one to the other of a succession of Catholic
officials while my weary fellow passengers gazed at me in my
lightning progress with eyes of envy. By a miracle of in-
genuity one of my religious sisters passed through the barrier
and I was companioned in my difficulties, if such they could
be called now that the Communion of Saints was so helpfully
illustrated. The only delay was caused by the question of
my 'residence' as I had been in England twelve years. 'Well,
indeed then, Sister dear,' said my chief protector, 'it's hard to
tell what you're a resident of at all. Come here, Mr. -
and tell Sister what she's a resident of and get her paper
signed, quick now.'
"Another plenipotentiary conducted me past that long line
of wistful passengers to some holy of holies on the other side
of the barrier. All inspection ceased while mine proceeded
under the auspices of the presiding genius (also of the one
true Church) and the mystery of my residence was solved-
how, I never knew my first aid-de-camp had by some sleight
22 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
of hand produced the supreme master of my fate who merely
chalked my luggage with a magic mark and never examined
anything. 'Father of Our Fathers, Holy Faith,' I murmured to
my companion: the place was full of it and, as an ardent
porter seized upon and bore off my effects, the words which I
had been demolishing with my class last term beat upon my
memory with a sort of ironic iteration :
'Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.'
"The gay affirmative whistle of our co-religionist, the
porter, announced a taxi which he disentangled from a laby-
rinth of vehicles, while tired eyes from the still long queue
looked with envy on our luck. 'Now, then, Sister dear, you're
all right.' My preax chevalier had indeed seen me through,
and all because, though personally unknown, I wore the
religious habit.
'The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy long-withdrawing roar.'
The sturdy whistle was finishing in the distance its interrupted
tune. I am sure that man had made his Easter duty and kept
to his Sunday Mass, and perhaps much more. At any rate,
I felt the convincing affirmation of that rich Irish brogue that
stands for a faith imperishable and divine, which, far from
'Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world,'
has broken like a great tidal wave of living, fertilizing water
upon the shores of the New World, now so largely Catholic
from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
"And I waxed eloquent within myself and thought: O
blessed land of Erin, what would the world be without you,
after all? You are God's missionary to the new countries of
the globe. If you had been more comfortable, you would have
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE
23
been less austere; if you had found a fuller natural existence,
you might have lost your curious nearness to the supernatural;
if you had rested in your own willfulness, you might have re-
linquished your strange and passionate adherence to the Will
of God; if you had been better governed, you might have
stayed at home and would not have been driven by famine and
hardship to carry the Faith to other lands! Where would be
now the splendid living Catholicity of the United States, of
English-speaking Canada, of Australia, of much of South
Africa, if it had not been for Irish emigration? The blood of
Spanish Franciscans and Dominicans and of French Jesuits
had indeed first moistened the untilled soil of the Americas,
but the solid establishment of the Church is the work of poor
Irish toilers whose tithes from scanty livelihoods built the
thousands of tabernacles which proclaim the life and fertility
of their faith; wherever they go they carry the Life of the
Sacraments, the Truth of the Gospel and the Way of the Cross.
It was not for nothing that their Celtic speech was absorbed
into English; that very misfortune as they now feel it to be,
has been the means of their world-wide apostolate. And those
who love them best and see in the perspective of history what
they have meant to the world in their poverty and purity and
faith, may wonder with affectionate anxiety if, in the days of
their own will, God's kingdom may not suffer!
"I was not as consecutive and eloquent as this in my mus-
ings, for our most serious thoughts jump about our mind like
grasshoppers and I have tidied them in collecting and record-
ing these; but is it not all obviously true? And you know that,
cosmopolitan as I am, I haven't a drop of Irish blood in my
veins (more's the pity), so I am not being patriotic."
And yet how lovable and precious is that sister island
whose glorious literature might be a challenge to the statement
that only faith is truly vital, for Irish letters lag behind her in
variety and interest and distinction. Yet half the charm of
modern English poetry lies in its wistfulness; the sense of loss,
of something missed and longed for, haunts the poetry, the
novel, the essay of the nineteenth century from Shelley onward;
or, if not the sense of loss, the spirit of joy at some rediscovery
as in Browning and Wordsworth. In Ireland, faith is not a
problem to solve, but a principle to live by, and there is not
so much to talk about. She knows Truth as clear sunshine
24 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
and has no sympathy with the preference for the compromise
of day and night, with its brooding sentiment and mystery and
indecision that make up the mental atmosphere of England's
art and religion.
The essential trouble between the two islands is that one
does not recognize the supernatural superiority of the other,
and that other scorns her for the loss of which she will not
understand the exceeding pathos. For England did not deny
her faith : it was, little by little, stolen from her : and she has
kept those splendid natural qualities of truth and good will and
self-control which distinguish her among nations. She never
lost her soul because she kept her conscience and her religious
sense, however grave her loss of the Life in her midst; her
character did not deteriorate as did that of her kindred country
her companion in the Reformation because in the midst of
mistakes and muddles and irritations her essential goodness
was not extinguished. And when the persecuted of other lands
asked for hospitality, she generously sheltered them, to her own
spiritual benefit, all unknowingly. But be this as it may, she
did lose the Incarnate Presence which was practically banished
from England by Act of Parliament. This Expression of Him-
self, God's Incarnate Word, could not be brought back in the
Mass save under penalty of death to the priest. Life must live.
The Word was forbidden to England, so she was driven to
language, to words that belong to earth, as her expression of
the modified life left to her. This is the secret of the richness
and variety of her literature that splendid modern spiritual
literature which is her best possession and, as she stands
religiously, the best legacy to her children.
Bitter, indeed, is the indictment of the precocious Anglican
lad of sixteen whose attack upon the English Public School
System was nowhere more severe than in his reproach that
there was no place or time for English literature in the cur-
riculum. Alec Waugh is right when he assigns to poetry the
cleansing and uplifting function denied to his boyhood when
an exclusive athletic ambition and a false code of honor held
his soul in bondage. That strange and painful book, The
Loom of Youth, is the cry from the vexed heart of a schoolboy
for the remedial life of the Sacraments, and for the best that
a great poetic people has garnered of her song "to haunt, to
startle and waylay;" to lift the mind out of the clod into the
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 25
star. His astonished and resentful world waited for a sequel,
but it has not yet come. There was, however, orientation in
the setting of a painful tale.
As Matthew Arnold is more or less the burden of this
paper, it might be of interest to recall to the reader his account
of a visit to Lacordaire's school at Soreze, where he was struck
by the relation between masters and pupils and the presence
of something that did not exist in the great English Public
Schools. Not now, indeed, for the Life has gone from them,
but the Eton of Henry VI. was full of that same Presence and
the great critic, with his usual lack of humor, lacked also the
corresponding sense of proportion.
But what is our Coign of Vantage? Raphael's famous
fresco, called erroneously, by eighteenth century engravers,
the "Disputa," illustrates, I think, the answer. The fresco
represents not a dispute, but a great truth. The monstrance
containing the Sacred Host stands in the midst of heaven and
earth as the Centre of the Universe. From the realization of
that Fact proceeds all true estimate of things as they really are.
Realization, in the words of a writer who has passed out of
the shadows and imaginings into the Truth, "is that gift which
enables the very few to see what they are looking at; to hear
what they are listening to; to feel what they are touching, and
to understand, in part, what they know" this modern defini-
tion is only an appropriation of Our Lord's words on the sub-
ject.
Yet why should the number be limited to the very few
when there are opportunities for the many? Is it asking too
much, above all, of ourselves as religious teachers, since even
the most ignorant (and oftentimes the least respectable and
well-behaved) mediaeval artist could make his faith vivid upon
his canvas? What was his possession? Why does such art
endure and defy imitation and still impress us spiritually?
A schoolgirl once remarked with regard to English pre-
Raphaelite painters: "They make you want to stay on earth,
but the Italian ones make you want to go to heaven." A more
complete criticism in one sentence could hardly be imagined.
What is the secret of that ineffable something that these men
put into their work which is so vitally convincing. The art of
the past, its ecclesiastical architecture so obviously created
for the Real Presence, and its greatest literature were the ex-
26 THE COIGN OF VANTAGE [April,
pression of the realization of the Incarnation the central
Fact the burning Heart of the 'universe. It was not part
of religion it was Life something taken for granted always
there, whether men were bad or good, careless or devout; it
was not a subjective idea, it was an objective concrete Reality,
and the natural, subconscious awareness of this stole into all
the work of their hands and made them give living expression
to living facts. It is just that mental attitude in ourselves that
alone can furnish the constructive antidote to the cheap
destructiveness of negative art and literature; and can pro-
duce in our children a certain right sense of values
without formal emphasis; for youth resents religious insist-
ence; is easily bored by enthusiasms not its own, and is restless
under moralizing. The impression made by the classroom
lesson should be that of the mediaeval canvas, a profound sense
of the inevitable Fact unconsciously imparted by one who
knows the Incarnate Wisdom not only in the daily act of
union, but in the morning study of His mind, His tastes, His
heart, which forestalls all the mental life of the day and
directs its currents.
This is not mere faith, nor is it piety, that separate gift
so often denied us; it is a certain recognition of the Presence
in our midst in a way not apart, not religious, but as the life
we live, the air we breathe. This is not a privilege reserved
for saints, but for everyday people like ourselves, as imperfect
in some respects as one of the mediaeval artists we have been
mentioning. This is that coign of vantage from which we have
the right and power to look out on the world with its problems,
its art, its misery and its beauty, its agony and its love, its
thought and its achievement, and to weigh and value all in the
only relation that counts.
We are in dire need of a handbook of English literature
from the Catholic point of view; not necessarily a formal
chronological treatise, but an informal collection of interpre-
tations, suggestions, hints illuminating rather than instructive.
If it is academic and graceful, so much the better a sense of
form is part of all interpretation of art; but it must be alive.
No one writer could accomplish such a task, because no single
mentality could compass the spirit of the different movements
and tendencies so pronounced in our world of letters. The
literary history of England from Milton onward is the history
1921.] THE COIGN OF VANTAGE 27
of her soul as a nation. Shakespeare and the Elizabethans,
except Spenser, are the outcome of the preceding centuries;
their joie de vivre and intensity, their vital sense of the laugh-
ter and tragedy of life, were an inheritance, not a renascence.
These, and their Catholic forerunners may, for the present,
be left aside for the more spiritually significant writers of the
seventeenth and nineteenth centuries who illustrate the trend
of English thought and aspiration in more modern times; al-
though, incidentally, most teachers would be grateful for a
Catholic annotated edition of Pope's Essay on Man.
There are, indeed, gems of essays and interpretations
scattered about in chance periodicals, or as prefaces to classics.
Some of these are too separately precious artistically to be
included in any general collection, even if that were possible
but they should be made accessible in some way or other.
Already one or two priceless volumes are available and there
is that treasury of facetious, but right-minded, suggestions and
appreciations, The Victorian Age of English Literature, by G.
K. Chesterton, who seems, by a sure instinct, to choose the
coign of vantage for his loved mansionry, or to take even a
momentary perch on the right jutty.
It is for some enterprising spirit to provide for a present
and pressing need, and one that touches very nearly the faith
and perseverance of our most highly gifted youth. Looked
'upon in the light of a real apostolate, such service must sooner
or later appeal to the zeal and conscience of one who will in-
evitably succeed in doing some good and preventing some evil.
One thing is certain, the coign of vantage is ours, and ours
alone and it is for us, temple-haunting martlets, guests of
summer as we are, to utilize our vision for our precious
charges, and from that height of delicate air to see for our-
selves and show to them things as they really are in the Sun
of Truth.
THE GREY NUNS.
BY R. F. O'CONNOR.
UGH has been said and written about the great
and fruitful labors of the Oblates in the vast mis-
sion field of western and northwestern Canada;
little or nothing has, hitherto, been made known
to English readers of the equally great work of
their valuable auxiliaries, the Grey Nuns. That omission has
now been supplied. 1 This moving record of heroism and hero-
ines is worthy of the most heroic epochs in the history of the
Church. From personal and first-hand knowledge of their
self-sacrificing lives, the author depicts, in a vivid narrative,
a thrilling picture of human suffering and endurance, none the
less human because inspired by supernatural motives, by burn-
ing zeal for the salvation of souls and the purest charity, "the
charity that endureth all things."
The writer outlines in a few pages the origin of these
Sisters of Charity. Like all great works of this kind since
Christianity dawned upon the world, its beginning was marked
by poverty, simplicity, and the sign of the Cross. Its foundress
was Madame d'Youville, a descendant of the celebrated De la
Verandrye de Varennes, the first explorer of the Red River
and the Assiniboine. Widowed in 1730, after an unhappy
marriage, she desired to devote herself to the poor, the sick
and prisoners under the guidance of a Sulpician priest, Father
Normant de Faradon her two sons had become priests. She
had simply in view a small group of pious and practical co-
workers; three formed the pusillus grex who were to expand
into a great Order, with branches extending from the Atlantic
to the Arctic Ocean. The foundation was laid when, on All
Saints, 1738, they assembled in community in a rented house
in Montreal. Their simple rule was to live in common on the
fruit of their own exertions, and with no other bond than
mutual charity. Charity has ever remained the distinctive note
of the Grey Nuns, and undoubtedly they have practised it in
1 The Grey Nuns in the Far North, 1867-1917. Translated from the French of
Father P. Duchaussois by Rev. T. Dawson, O.M.I., Inchicore, Dublin.
1921.] THE GREY NUNS
29
every form to the heroic degree in the wild wastes of the great
Northland.
For seven consecutive years the cross of physical suffering
lay heavily upon them. The mother of the little community
had to keep her bed, suffering from a knee disease, brought
on by much walking in the snow, on the way to hear Mass or
to visit the sick. Their first house was burned in 1745. They
were insulted, hissed, hooted and calumniated. It was said
they gave strong drink to the Indians, and were jeered at as
sceurs grises; the latter word meaning, in French, tipsy, as well
as gray. Like the Divine Master, Mother d'Youville "em-
braced the Cross, despising the shame," When she had to de-
cide upon a religious habit, she selected the gray color. Thus
what was applied in derision as a mark of contempt has
become a mark of honor and distinction.
In 1747, they were given charge of the hospital of Ville
Marie, then decadent. It was burned down in 1765, and one
hundred and eighteen persons were left homeless. The found-
ress, kneeling amid the ruins, said : "My children, let us kneel
down and recite the Te Deum, to give thanks to God for send-
ing us this cross;" adding, as she rose, like one inspired: "Be
of good heart, it will never burn again" a prophecy which
so far has been verified. On June 15, 1775, the new
sisterhood received the episcopal approbation of the Bishop of
Quebec; two months later, on August 25th, they appeared in
their parish church, wearing, for the first time, their religious
habit. Mother d'Youville died of apoplexy on December 23,
1771, aged seventy. On July 30, 1880, her Institute was
solemnly and finally approved by Leo XIII., who, on March 27,
1890, signed the formal document preparatory to the beatifica-
tion "of this valiant woman, who was all on fire with zeal and
charity in the service of the poor."
For twenty years Monseigneur Provencher, the saintly
pioneer missioner of the Northwest and first Bishop of the Red
River, or Saint Boniface, had sought in vain for nuns to be
shepherdesses of the little lambs of his Indian flock. Some-
one said to him: "Try the Grey Nuns; they never refuse." He
did. "When leaving the Red River," he told the thirty-eight
Sisters he found at the Mother House in Montreal, "I said: '
my God, You know my need of the help of nuns. Vouchsafe
to lead my steps into some place where I can find them/ Then
30 THE GREY NUNS [April,
I set out in confidence that my prayer would be heard. Would
any of you be willing to come to the Red River?" All volun-
teered. The four who were chosen set out on April 24, 1844,
reaching the Red River at Saint Roniface on June 21st after a
continuous journey of fifty-nine days. It was the beginning
of as arduous and trying an apostolate as was ever undertaken
by strong men, not to speak of the hardships it imposed upon
physically weaker women. A long journey into the Great
Lone Land was very different then from what it is in our days
of luxurious Pullman cars. Now the traveler is whisked by
steam over the 2,200 miles it formerly took four months to
traverse.
In 1844, when the nuns journeyed 1,400 miles to the
nascent Red River settlement, they encountered more than
fifty rapids, eighty portages and many other impediments,
having to pass through the territories of uncivilized, pagan
Indian tribes, some of them, like the Sioux, very fierce, the
only signs of civilization being crosses marking the graves
of pioneers who had perished on their adventurous journeys.
They had to climb mountains and pitch their tents in the midst
of serpents. "I have embraced the Cross as my portion, and
I mean to cling to it, even until death, in the spirit of our holy
Rule," wrote one of these courageous women, Sister Lagrave.
During their first winter at Saint Roniface, the thermometer
in the little house assigned to them registered seventy-two
degrees below freezing point. They were marooned by a great
flood in 1852 from April 27th to June 6th in a new house to
which they were transferred. The water rose so high that
they had to quit the ground floor, and Mass was said in the gal-
lery, the chapel being flooded. In 1861 Saint Roniface was
again flooded, and on May 13th of that year when Sister
Valade (the superioress of the little band of nuns) died, there
was not a single foot of dry ground to receive her mortal
remains; Monseigneur Tache, who carried the coffin, having to
walk and stand in water knee-deep. Notwithstanding these
early trials, the first convent in the Northwest has since become
a Provincialate house, with seventeen other dependent con-
vents and two hundred and forty-four nuns.
Until 1862 the Red River was only the threshold of a dio-
cese which reached to the Rocky Mountains and the Polar Sea.
In that vast expanse of 1,800,000 square miles there was but
1921.] THE GREY NUNS
31
one bishop, Monseigneur Tache, successor of Bishop Proven-
cher who, dying on June 7, 1853, after thirty-five years of
apostolic labors, thirty-one of them spent in the episcopate,
left his coadjutor in sole charge. When he appealed to the
Sister Superior in Montreal for Grey Nuns to look after the
Indians and halfbreeds at the five missionary posts in the
northern part of the diocese, the Mother General said: "We
are quite sure the Fathers will not see our Sisters starve; we
ask only food and clothing." "Sometimes," replied the Bishop,
"the Fathers themselves have not enough to eat." "Well,"
said the Reverend Mother, "in that case our Sisters, too, will
fast, and will pray God to come to the help of both commun-
ities."
Three nuns accompanied Monseigneur Grandin, who had
been consecrated assistant Bishop, to He a la Grosse in October,
1860; reaching it after a difficult journey of sixty-three days,
twice escaping what seemed to be certain death. The nuns
were huddled together in a corner of the overladen boat along
with a squaw and her children, swarming with vermin. The
Convent at He a la Crosse, the fruit of years of labor and self-
sacrifice, was totally destroyed by fire at the beginning of
March, 1867. "Nothing whatever has been spared, not even a
handkerchief to wipe away our tears," wrote Monseigneur
Grandin. The new orphanage, raised in the ashes of the old,
was undermined by a flood, and had to be abandoned. In 1905
ten weeping Sisters departed; the Indians entreating them not
to leave them and their children, and even trying forcibly to
restrain them. In 1909 Bishop Pascal, O.M.I., of Prince Albert,
wrote to the Mother General : "The other nuns who came were
not able to stay, where your Sisters for fifty years lived under
less favorable conditions. God Almighty seems to be telling
us that the Grey Nuns of Montreal are, par excellence, the
predestined missionary Sisters of the Northwest, and that they
alone are capable of filling posts demanding such self-sacrifice.
The Indians remain inconsolable since the nuns went." He
did not appeal in vain. The Grey Nuns returned to He a la
Grosse, where a second convent was founded in 1917.
Other foundations followed. At that time- the country
formed the hunting ground of the Crees, a branch of the great
Algonquin race. They were thus described by the late Bishop
Lafleche: "The Prairie Indians, that is, the Blackfeet, the
32 THE GREY NUNS [April,
Assiniboines, the Crees, and in considerable number, the Sau-
teux, are an abject race. I think it is no exaggeration to say
that in them we find the very lowest type of humanity." It was
the work of the Grey Nuns to help Christianize and civilize
these debased creatures. It called for the patience and faith of
the saints to do such a work, and involved years of self-
denying labor.
Saint Albert, or Edmonton, now forms for the Grey Nuns
a separate province from Saint Boniface, with seven convents
and over one hundred nuns. They had been working for
twenty-three years at the Red River and for six years north
and west, when, pushing farther north in response to the
appeal of Monseigneur Faraud, Vicar Apostolic of Athabasca-
Mackenzie, a group of volunteers left Montreal on September
17, 1866, for Fort Providence, past Great Slave Lake, which
they reached on August 28, 1867. On the golden jubilee of that
foundation, Father Grouard, who became Monseigneur Far-
aud's successor, said: "I said to myself, what hardihood!
Providence! But we ought not to tempt Providence. If the
Sisters ever arrive, how will they be able to live through our
terrible and long winters, without bread, without anything?
We can sometimes snare or shoot a hare or a muskrat. What
will they do? Thus I said to myself. But the Sisters came.
They managed to survive. And now they are keeping their
golden jubilee at Providence! Surely Providence has watched
over them in a most special way, and has blessed all their
works." The Mackenzie country, in the heart of which this
mission is situated, is the most northerly part of the American
Continent. A land eight times as large as Great Britain and
Ireland, its lakes and rivers are frozen for eight months out
of the twelve. Intercommunication between missions, two
hundred miles distant from each other, is by means of dog-
sleds.
The Indians, scattered through the Mackenzie woods, be-
long to the Dene family, of whom the missioners speak favor-
ably. Still their pagan traditions, including some inhuman
customs, are so firmly established that some traces of them
remain even after sixty years of Christian teaching. They
were much addicted to polygamy and cruelty to women and
children. A father thought no more of his daughter than of
his dog, or perhaps less; killing little girls was not regarded
1921.] THE GREY NUNS
33
as blameworthy. They beat their wives, kept them without
food, and laid heavy loads upon them. To humanize these
callous savages, the Grey Nuns penetrated into the Far North.
Except a very inadequate capitation grant to the Indian In-
dustrial School, the Catholic Missions have only two resources
from which to supply their growing needs the charity of in-
dividual benefactors and the manual labors of the Grey Nuns
and the Oblates. The nuns cleared the soil, dug and delved,
and on the surface of the earth (which always remains frozen
on the surface) they grew whatever they were able to save
from the frosts of summer nights, and the dry heats and
locusts of July days. Fish, however, is the principal food of
the North, the chief fishermen being the Oblate lay-brothers;
but when the nets are swept away by storms or the boats are
ice-bound, they have to be content with eight thousand fish
instead of the twenty or twenty-five thousand required for one
mission-house with its community, schools and orphanages.
Sister Michon, who was learning to play, as there was no one
to accompany the singers, wrote from Providence in 1892: "I
am handier with hatchet or saw, in household work, and cabin-
building, than with a note of music."
Bishop Grandin, following the course of the Mackenzie
River for forty miles, pitched upon a wooded headland as
the site for a central Mission, and planted there a large
cross. "I have called the place La Providence," he wrote
to Monseigneur Tache, "for I believe it destined to be the
Providence of our northern Missions." He built the first
house to shelter the nuns during the winter of 1863-4, bringing
the necessary wood, with the dogs as carters, from an island
in front of the headland; driving in the first peg and Father
(now Bishop) Grouard the second. Bishop Faraud, in 1865,
made the furniture. The five missionary Sisters, who spent the
winter of 1866-7 at Saint Boniface, set out, on June 8, 1867,
on their nine hundred and ten mile journey to La Providence,
Sister Lapointe saying: "We wanted to be on our way to our
own poor home whose destitute and desolate conditions had
more attraction for us than all the rich and pleasant places of
the world." It was a long and toilsome journey in springless
bullock carts, crossing hundreds of torrents and streams, when
the carts had sometimes to be taken to pieces and turned into
boats. There was torrential rain lasting for ten, twelve, even
VOL. CXIII. 3
34 THE GREY NUNS [April,
fifteen consecutive days; ceasing only for some rare moments
when a scorching sun seemed to be heaping coals of fire upon
their heads. They slept often on bare marshy ground, their
blankets, cloaks and other belongings being saturated with
rain. Yet they were none the worse for what the Sister Su-
perior calls their "little sufferings and privations."
After a few day's rest at Lac La Biche, midway, they re-
sumed their journey on August 3, 1867. Hitherto they had to
contend with mud; now they were to encounter rivers, lakes
and dangerous rapids, and to follow an unexplored route;
sometimes to make their way through a dense forest, at other
times over steep river banks, sinking in the mud at every step ;
having to cross multitudes of tributary streams, or losing them-
selves in thickets which showed no way out. Bishop Faraud
had to go before them, hatchet in hand, clearing a pathway,
cutting down trees, and throwing temporary bridges over the
ravines. They had to walk until breathless from fatigue; the
only surcease being a night's sleep in a tent while the rain
poured down, lightning flashed, and thunder shook the earth
beneath them. In the morning they arose with aching sides
and stiff and feverish limbs, trembling to think of what might
still be before them.
One of the things before them was to lend a hand to tow
a barge, harnessed in couples to it. "This was 'portaging,'
indeed !" wrote one of the Sisters. "As the bishop had charged
us not to pull hard, lest we might hurt ourselves, no harm was
done, though we were fatigued; and the boatsmen gayly compli-
mented us on not having broken our collars. But I should have
liked some of our Montreal friends to see us. Five Grey Nuns
in harness! What a pretty picture!" They took everything
as it came, light-heartedly. Some of them professed to enjoy
shooting the rapids, though at times they thought otherwise
when it seemed rushing to certain death. Once when the iron
cutwater, striking a rock was broken in pieces with a loud
noise, the boat was shaken like the branches of a tree, and they
were suddenly plunged into the whirling waters, while their
hearts beat rapidly and the perspiration streamed down their
faces. Some of the Sisters were so hurt that for half an hour
they could hardly breathe.
Three happy days en route were spent at Nativity Mission,
Fort Chipewyan, the oldest mission in these northern parts.
1921.] THE GREY NUNS 35
There they were sacristans at the consecration of Monseigneur
Glut, O.M.I., as auxiliary to Bishop Faraud who conferred epis-
copal orders upon him. "How touching it was," wrote one of
the nuns who took part in the ceremony, "to be the witness of
so solemn an event, in a place where a few years earlier the
name of God had never been heard, and where now there was
a good number of Christians, owing to the zeal and persever-
ance of the missionary Fathers!"
At Salt River they were much moved at seeing the Indians
assembled to welcome them, gathered round their bishop in
their humble chapel assisting devoutly at Mass, at which they
sang in their own language. Two more days and nights
brought them to St. Joseph's Mission, Fort Resolution, Great
Slave Lake, an inland sea. It was the last stage of their jour-
ney, and when they reached, at long last, their destination,
they were welcomed by another crowd of Indians, cheering
and firing off volleys as a salute. They responded by intoning
the Magnificat. "We were ashore, in a strange, though longed-
for, land, in our new country, our home, our tomb," wrote one
of the nuns to the Mother General. "Never since our arrival,
have we regretted coming; never for a moment have we been
unhappy. That does not at all mean that we have all that we
can wish for ! There are, in truth, many sacrifices to be made.
But it was in order to make them that we came here. . . .
Adieu, dearest Mother! This paper, happier than ourselves,
will find its way into the bosom of our loved community. We
can only follow it in spirit. Or, rather, we shall go before it,
for our thoughts fly back more quickly there. Adieu, good and
dear Sisters all! Most probably we shall never see one another
again in this world."
In the last fifty years many other Grey Nuns have made
the same journey towards the North Pole. Mother Gharlebois,
who visited Providence Mission in 1880, wrote: "It is a terrible
experience for nuns." Mother Piche, who made her visitation
of the northern convents in 1912, wrote: "If it were not to help
in saving souls, surely no one could face the difficulties which
our self-sacrificing Sisters do face so willingly." Mother
Stubinger, in 1893, on her return journey, was saved from star-
vation by a few famished hares, snared in the night. Trials
of all kinds abounded. Dearly bought goods were sent to the
bottom of some lake in transit; boats were dashed to pieces on
36 THE GREY NUNS [April,
the rocks, nuns barely escaped being drowned. One of the
Grey Nuns, Sister Marie Marguerite, was on her way to Prov-
idence Mission in 1870 in company with Bishop Glut and Father
Foure, 2 when the guides ran away, leaving the little com-
pany to its fate. The Bishop set out on foot to look for help.
A month elapsed before he could get back, and by that time
the bad weather, weariness, hunger and fever had brought the
poor nun to death's door. She died in another week at Lake
Athabasca.
The journey northward was very trying, but the work
before them on their arrival was still more trying. One of
them, writing in 1867, draws a harrowing picture of what they
had to face in their efforts to uplift a race sunk in the deepest
depths of barbarism. It was a general custom to kill, and
sometimes to eat, orphan children, especially little girls. A
mother, looking contemptuously on her newly-born daughter,
would say: "Her father has deserted me; I am not going to
feed her." She would thereupon wrap up the infant in the
skin of an animal, smother it, and throw it into the rubbish
heap. Another unnatural mother would say to herself: "My
child's father is dead; who will now take care of it? I am
hardly able to support myself." Then she would make a hole
in the snow, bury her child there, and unconcernedly pass
on. An Indian father lost his wife and two or three children
during an epidemic; only one child, still in arms, remaining.
For two or three days he carried the little survivor, then left
it hanging on the branch of a tree, and went on his way. Here
is where the presence and work of the nuns came in. These
savages would rather have given their children to their care
than have killed them or let them die.
Among other good works undertaken by the nuns was
educating the Indian or half-breed children so that they might
be able to spread a knowledge of the Catholic religion among
their kindred; and the personal care of the sick in their con-
vent, which became known as the Sacred Heart Hospital.
They also visit and tend the sick in their own huts. One ob-
stacle in the way of doing so much for the orphans and the
sick was the utter poverty in which the nuns themselves had
to live. In 1899, when the present convent of La Providence
'Now the venerated Oblate chaplain of the Grey Nuns at Notre Dame de la
Providence.
1921.] THE GREY NUNS 37
was opened, one of the Sisters had to sleep on a table on the
ground floor; and for a long time in the beginning, the nuns'
gray habits were made of canvas. Talking of those hard
times, a Sister who had been at Providence since 1884, said
with a smile: "But we did not let them know at the Mother
House; we were afraid of being called back."
A crisis was reached in 1881-82, when an order reached
them to abandon the convent. The nuns, greatly distressed,
wept; the Indians and half-breeds said they could not allow
those who nursed their sick and were mothers to their orphans
to go. All the Protestants of Fort Providence, too, were deeply
grieved. Preparations for their departure were made and de-
layed. The nuns could only say: "There will be another letter
from Montreal, ordering us to return without fail." "No,"
said a friendly Protestant gentleman, Mr. Gamsell, chief of-
ficial of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Simpson, "all
letters pass through my hands, and no such letter shall reach
you." Father Ladet, on being asked to help in packing up,
said: "No! God Almighty will not permit your departure. The
Sisters are doing too much good here; their going away would
be too great a misfortune; they cannot go, and I am sure they
won't go; I will pack no boxes." Meanwhile the nuns stormed
Heaven with prayers that the sentence might not be carried
out. "We had suffered so much in our frozen North," one of
them afterwards said, "and we were so much attached to our
poor orphans, that we thought we could not now be happy
elsewhere."
Long before the boats were due, everything was packed
and ready, and the walls of the convent were bare. One even-
ing in March, 1882, the fateful letter was delivered. The Su-
perior held it for a while unopened in her trembling hands.
"Open it," said an Oblate Father; "I am sure it brings good
news; we have all prayed so much." It did. The nuns were
to remain, and their number was even to be increased before
long.
It is pleasant to read of the friendly relations between the
Catholic missioners and the Protestants, as if fellowship in
well-doing and remoteness from civilization had drawn them
together. At the Nativity Mission, Lake Athabasca founded
in 1847 by Father Tache and picturesquely situated on the
cliffs overhanging the lake they had Midnight Mass at their
38 THE GREY NUNS [April,
first Christmas, when the children sang beautifully, their par-
ents shedding tears of joy. "Who, indeed, could fail to be
moved by those angel voices hymning the praise of the Divine
Child in the Crib?" wrote Father (now Bishop) Paschal. "Our
little church was crowded that night. All the Protestants of
the Fort were present, including the schoolmaster. They re-
mained also for the second Mass."
This Mission, the oldest and still the most important of all
the Missions in the Northern Vicariates, had suffered much in
the beginning. It made slow progress for nearly thirty years
until the Grey Nuns from Providence founded there the Con-
vent of the Holy Angels in 1874. They began in an old
shed, where there was only one room, one table and one pallet,
and where they had to improvise a dormitory out of a garret.
Their food was as scanty as their resources. When they were
ordered by Mother Dupuis to leave Athabasca, Father Grouard
said: "I will go on my knees, if necessary; I will not return
without getting approval of what you have done" (opening a
school without the approbation of the Mother General). He
pleaded so successfully in Montreal that the new foundation
was accepted and three additional Sisters were sent out. When
the two communities were dependent on the success of the
Indians in hunting and fishing, what must have been their state
in times of famine, when some of the Athabasca Indians be-
came cannibals !
In 1848 the Montagnais sent a deputation to Father Tache
who, voicing the sentiments of one of the oldest men of this
Indian tribe, said: "Make haste to come, for my head is now
white, and I do not want to die without hearing the good words
from your lips." The result was the foundation, in 1852, by
Monseigneur Faraud of St. Joseph's Mission, Fort Resolution.
The Fort is the rendezvous of a great many Catholic Indians.
The nuns began their work here in 1903 in greater poverty
than any of their Sisters. When they arrived, there was only
the framework of a house, and they had to be content with a
borrowed garret. "We could not have begun in greater pov-
erty. Is it not a good sign?" wrote Sister Boisvert. The hovel
in which they were lodged had been the place in which the
harness for the dogs, the sledges and various implements were
kept, as well as the storehouse for dried meat, fish and other
provisions, and was swarming with mice. It was only four
1921.] THE GREY NUNS
39
feet high, and they had to go down on their knees to reach
their little pallets. But the ever-useful Oblate Brothers were
not slow in building for them a small wooden house, twenty
by thirty feet. This for six years served as a hospice in which
they gathered the ragged and dirty little Indian children,
Crawling with vermin, to wash and clean and teach. It ac-
commodated five nuns and twenty-five children for the first
three years; but when there were nine nuns and forty-five
pupils, they had to build a new convent and a house for the
bishop in 1909.
The year, 1910, was rich in crosses for St. Joseph's Mission.
"We cannot take more children, not being able to feed them,"
the Sisters wrote to the Mother House. Their provisions were
exhausted; the storehouse was empty; even the mice seemed
to mourn. Only the fishing of the priests and lay-brothers kept
them alive. After much suffering nobly borne, the convent is
now a completed building with a handsome mansard roof and
belfry surmounted by a white cross. The ten missionary
Sisters are educating a hundred children gathered out of the
woods bordering the Slave River and the Great Lake.
Other foundations were made between 1914 and 1916.
At Fort Smith, on the Slave River, near the northern bound-
ary of Alberta, at the foot of the last of the rapids that
hinder navigation towards the Arctic regions, was established
the Montagnais Mission of St. Isidore on the threshold of the
Mackenzie Vicariate Apostolic, the most northern of the dio-
ceses. There the Grey Nuns, as usual, started their work with
a hospital and a school, a small lean-to-shed being their first
"convent." Here again opposite creeds came into friendly con-
tact.
In 1916 the Grey Nuns arrived in Fort Simpson, in the
heart of the Mackenzie district, a central position between
Fort Smith and the Arctic Ocean and the most distant mission
of the Grey Nuns. In 1911 the Canadian Government estab-
lished an Indian Agency, the first agent being Mr. Gerald Card,
"a gentleman," says Father Duchaussois, "whose justice and
friendliness to the Catholics are an honor to the Protestant
body." He provided the timber, and rendered many other
services, when, in 1912, a General Hospital for the Indian tribes
of the Lower Mackenzie was erected; obtaining from the Ot-
tawa Government the means of furnishing it.
40 THE GREY NUNS [April,
When, in 1906, the development of the natural resources
of the MacMurray region, at the northern extremity of the
long chain of rapids on the Athabasca River, attracted com-
mercial speculators, and a consequent increase of population
led to the establishment of a permanent Catholic Mission, the
parishioners a very mixed crowd of whites and Indians
clamored for a hospital and nursing Sisters, a school and
teachers. It was three hundred miles distant from physicians
or surgeons. Once again it was the Grey Nuns who became the
nurses and teachers.
These heroic women reflect honor upon the Church, the
fruitful parent of heroic souls from the dawn of Christianity;
upon their sex, in showing of what sublime self-sacrifice it is
capable when it realizes its true place in the human economy
as the helpmate of man in the spiritual, as well as in the
natural order, as ministering angels, as a visible Providence
to the poor, the sick, the suffering and to helpless childhood;
and upon themselves as brave pioneers in the onward march
of civilization, bringing the glad tidings of salvation to the
most abandoned races on the face of the globe.
Thirst for souls and for suffering, love of the Sacred Heart
and of the Cross give them fortitude for self-immolation. It
enables them to labor and endure and to be happy, light-
hearted and even joyful in the midst of trials and tribulations.
"We believe," writes Father Duchaussois, "that there is not one
of the Grey Nuns who would not be bitterly disappointed if,
on reaching the Mackenzie Missions, she found that the suffer-
ings of the early days were all past and gone. One young nun,
among the first who were sent to Great Slave Lake, thus ex-
pressed her feelings: 'Evidently it is our Divine Lord's wish
that all our missions should have the Cross in their foundation,
so that we may be the true children of Mother d'Youville.' "
ST. CATHARINE.
BY J. A. SCANLAN.
LOVE, Catharine, love;
O'er the dark deep thy white keel is gliding, gliding;
With eyes above,
Peer thro' gloom mists abrood on the moaning sea;
Watch the blue tint from His light aguiding, guiding,
List for His call in the wind's soft symphony:
"Child, follow Me."
Fast, Catharine, fast;
Close in thy wake hostile guides are howling, howling
The world's shrill blast
Siren-like anthems, wild hollow shrieks of woe.
Crazed as spied wolves in still thickets prowling, prowling
Harpy- winged traitors envenomed charms bestow:
"Child, do not go."
Pray, Catharine, pray;
Calm rolls the sea; the swift breeze is blowing, blowing
The mists away.
Passed is night's gloom; ahead are the fervid sands
Spangled with touches of Love's fire glowing, glowing.
Angels are chanting with white robed virgin bands:
"Love God's commands."
Love, Catharine, love;
Jesus alone on His cross is dying, dying.
Where's His white dove?
Swift as a seraph, ply to His bleeding breast;
List to thy Crucified Love asighing, sighing:
"Catharine, My Virgin, to soothe My soul oppressed,
Heed My behest."
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE.
BY THEODORE MAYNARD.
R. LASCELLES ABERGROMBIE is the only Eng-
lish poet who is a skeptic. By which I do not
mean that all other English poets have been or-
thodox Christians (indeed, very few have made
any definite religious profession); but that all
other English poets have lived by philosophies which had this
at least in common that they were positive whereas Mr.
Lascelles Abercrombie lives by a philosophy that is nega-
tive.
Coleridge muddled himself with German metaphysics, but
he was not a skeptic. Shelley boasted of being an Atheist,
but he was not a skeptic. Swinburne adopted the title of
Pagan, but he was not a skeptic. Even Davidson could only
be written down formally as a Materialist: his intuitions in-
clined incorrigibly towards mysticism. Abercrombie stands
apart from all these doubting the existence of Truth, ques-
tioning whether Reason is serviceable to any other end save
that of Enjoyment.
There is a skeptic who says that God may exist, but is
undiscoverable. There is a skeptic who denies the existence of
God, while affirming the existence of a discoverable absolute
Truth to which his denial bears a relation. These are the
simple skeptics. But the true, the complete, the subtle skeptic
finds the notion of final, immutable absolute truth incredible.
Such a skeptic is Mr. Abercrombie.
Having given in his dialogue between Science and the
World (where the objective reality of science is rudely
treated), the familiar example of grains of sand taking pattern
under the influence of music, he asserts that "this world of
sand plus pattern exists nowhere but in the scope of man's
knowledge of his own being, and exists only for that knowledge.
. . . Man decides on the truth of your conclusions. Science, by
1921.] LASCELLES ABERCROMB1E 43
deciding whether he likes them or not: that is whether they
shape in accordance with the inherent formality of his deep
desires. . . You may be quite easy beforehand about the truth
of your rhythmic world; it will be true enough for man, be-
cause he will certainly like it." Reason has the ground cut
from under its feet.
It may be a sort of an explanation of the world to say that
the world cannot be explained, or it is a useful substitute for an
explanation. Here is the inverted Nirvana of skepticism where
bliss is to be found in the widening radius of the subjective, the
sharpening of the edge of a delusive consciousness. I leave it
at that for the moment to return to it later. It is only neces-
sary to say at this point that Mr. Abercrombie's metaphysics
color his verse throughout, and that both the metaphysics and
the verse are magnificent matters; but that in order to appre-
ciate the one, we must understand the other.
In many ways Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie is one of the
most interesting poets who have written in English. The pro-
fundity, power and flexibility of his thought mark him off from
all his contemporaries, and indeed in these qualities he is only
to be matched by two or three of our greatest poets. We are
obliged to admire his gigantic intellectual force, and the range
of his literary equipment. The star of his destiny has endowed
him with nearly all the qualities that go to the make-up of
supremacy nearly all the qualities all, in fact, except the
most important, sympathy. A tragic punishment has fallen
upon him. Because the thinker has made conscious desire the
rock of his artistic philosophy, his feelings are atrophied. I
suspect that it is because Mr. Abercrombie is aware of this
disability that he has strained himself to breaking point, striv-
ing to conquer on the ground where he is most vulnerable.
Because his emotions are chilly, he recklessly spends his vast
resources of metaphysics in order to try somehow to infuse
them with warmth.
The heroic attempt has failed. Mr. Abercrombie is not a
great poet, but he has so much of the great poet in him
that the greater philosopher succeeds in concealing his weak-
ness.
It is noteworthy that in a lyrical age Abercrombie is almost
alone among his contemporaries in his inability to write a
lydc. It is not through want of trying. His overweening pride
44 LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE [April,
insists that he shall snatch the laurel. But he cannot wear it.
We must admit, however, that some of his abortive lyrics con-
tain exquisite lines. The best of these are to be found in
Judith's song before Holof ernes:
Balkis was in her marble town,
And shadow over the world came down.
Whiteness of walls, towers and piers,
That all day dazzled eyes to tears,
Turned from being white-golden flame,
And like the deep-sea blue became.
And coming to a pool where trees
Grew in double greeneries,
Saw herself, as she went by
The water, walking beautifully,
And saw the stars shine in the glance
Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance
Passing, pale and wonderful,
Across the night that filled the pool.
I have carefully selected my quotation. These are the
best lines of Lascelles Abercrombie's best lyric; the remainder
does not come up to this level. Again, the central verse of
Margaret's song in The New God:
Would now the tall swift mists could lay
Their wet grasp on my hair,
And the great natures of the hills
Round me friendly were
though good, is no better than hundreds of such verses that Mr.
Drinkwater has written. And the finest lines of all occur in an
otherwise poor poem, as its solitary but splendid touch of
distinction :
When Spring
Loitering down wet woodways
Treads it sauntering.
This poverty in lyricism is of considerable importance, as
it indicates a poverty in emotion which even the elaboration
of Mr. Abercrombie's dramatic work can barely conceal. For
if we take the trouble to analyze this writer's plays, we shall,
I think, find that they may be more correctly classified as
1921.] LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 45
Speculative Dialogues. In almost every case a certain incident
or set of incidents has been accepted to give a dramatic frame-
work for what is to be set up. This framework is then covered
by the philosopher with a number of sweet sounds and strik-
ing images. But the result is not drama. Except for Blind
and The Adder, and parts of Judith, Lascelles Abercrombie is
not writing plays at all, but simply accepting the dramatic
form for the sake of its convenience. In the first piece of
Emblems of Love two men are standing at a barricade in some
prehistoric twilight, waiting for the onslaught of the wolves.
As a play it should obviously begin with the first rush of the
wolves. That is just the point where it has to end. Even
barbarians cannot discuss love and fight for their lives at the
same time.
As for Vashti, she puts all her cards on the table, so to
speak, with the first couple of sentences she utters. There is
no movement, no life. The central ideas are static.
And where there is an exception to this rule we are given
not drama, but melodrama. We are asked to accept a girl
who falls in love with the head of a rebel which she sees for
the first time stuck upon a gate in Carlisle. I do not believe in
her.
Neither do I believe in the Methodist woodcutter who
worships an adder which he keeps in a box, because so long
as that adder lives his own sins are safely contained within
its body. Neither will I believe that such a man would murder
his daughter with a bite from the adder to prevent her possible
seduction by the dissolute penny-dreadful squire. All these
plays contain fine writing, but they are constructed out of the
rankest melodrama, else why should Judith feel herself so
sullied by Ozia's offer of marriage, that she could cast herself
to obscenities before Holof ernes?
The fact is that Lascelles Abercrombie has weaker dra-
matic inclinations than any other writer I can think of. He
has no sympathy with his characters; and he goes on the
principle that any old plot will do, so long as it can be made
to serve a philosophical purpose.
This criticism, though I believe it to be generally correct,
is, I gladly acknowledge, incorrect if applied to any one of
two or three particular instances. And this large admission
falls with special force to that very remarkable play, The Sale
46 LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE [April,
of St. Thomas. It is not a play that could be acted (to do
Mr. Abercrombie justice only The Adder was written for stage
production); it is hardly more than a dialogue; but it cannot
be dismissed, as I have already dismissed some pieces of ex-
ternal similarity to it, as a Speculative Dialogue. The poet is
interested in his characters. There are thrilling moments in
the play whose whole movement is psychological. The sea
captain, the foil of the Apostle, is vividly drawn. We can taste
the quality of his grim humor and his relish over the hesita-
tions of the Saint, whose plausible argument against trusting
merchandise so precious as the Gospel to the Indian seas,
whose recognition of the magnitude of his task and of his
insufficient powers receive their final answer in a noble pas-
sage of poetry from "The Stranger" Who is the Lord of
Apostles :
"Now, Thomas, know thy sin. It was not fear;
Easily may a man crouch down for fear,
And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face
The hailing storm of the world with graver courage.
But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin,
And one that groweth deep into a life,
With hardening roots that clutch about the breast.
For this refuses faith in the unknown powers
Within man's nature; shrewdly bringeth all
Their inspiration of strange eagerness
To a judgment bought by safe experience;
Narrows desire into the scope of thought.
But it is written in the heart of man,
Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire.
Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight
To pore only within the candle-gleam
Of conscious wit and reasonable brain;
But search into the sacred darkness lying
Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast
Measureless fate, full of the power of stars,
The outer noiseless heavens of thy soul.
Keep thy desire closed in the room of light
The laboring fires of thy mind have made.
And thou shalt find the vision of thy spirit
Pitifully dazzled to so shrunk a ken,
There are no spacious puissances about it.
But send desire often forth to scan
The immense night which is thy greater soul;
1921.] LASCELLES ABERCROMB1E 47
Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it
Into impossible things, unlikely ends;
And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire
Grow large as all the regions of thy soul,
Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being
And of created purpose reach the ends."
I shall have something to say about these words of Christ,
before I conclude this article. For the present I leave them to
point out of what excellent blank verse Mr. Abercrombie is
capable. He has grave faults, a deliberate stiffness at times, a
determination, it would appear, to make the reader break his
neck to discover how the lines scan. These lines are never
without vigor, but they are frequently unnecessarily rocky,
not easy to be traversed. To pick out a haphazard example:
"Tawny or purple, green, scarlet or blue" seems to have been
twisted into awkwardness for the mere sake of being difficult.
It would have done quite as well in the smoother, "Tawny or
purple, scarlet, green or blue."
At its best, however, Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie's blank
verse is astoundingly good. The awkwardness of which the
reader may legitimately complain turns into accomplished
dignity, made manifest in masterly power. The late Edward
Thomas did not hesitate to assert that "there is only one Eng-
lish dramatist who has gone beyond this poet in making blank
verse, the march or leap or stagger or crawl or hesitation of
the syllables correspond to varying emotions with thrilling
delicacy." That is, at all events, an interesting judgment, and
though (with, I trust, all due modesty) I cannot entirely assent,
I will readily concede that Mr. Abercrombie often manages to
get out of blank verse an energy of rhythm that is peculiarly
his own. A great number of passages could be quoted by way
of illustration. These lines from the play, Judith, will do as
well as any:
"There are no words may turn this deed to song:
Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din,
Unmeasured yelling exultation, can
Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now,
Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing,
A dignity liked carved Egyptian stone;
Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it;
48 LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE [April,
It is abroad like powder in a wind,
Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide,
Thou having roused the ungovernable waters
My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower.
My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed
In joy or fear, disturbance without name,
Out of the rivers it is fallen in
Can snatch no substance it may shape to words
Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise.
We are all abasht by thee, and only know
To worship thee with shouts and astounded passion."
In conclusion, I return to the philosophy of this poet;
because that philosophy is worked out so elaborately through
poem and play it is of too obvious an importance to be ignored.
It would take too long to analyze the poems and plays until
we discovered in each their central notion that Truth is not
the end of man, but a means to man's enjoyment and to the
widening of his consciousness. Truth is not even relative, he
says in effect, because a Relative implies an Absolute Truth.
But what may be accepted as Truth is anything that delights
the spirit's intellectual lust. This is the idea of the whole of
The Sale of St. Thomas. He is condemned by his Lord for
"refusing faith in the unknown powers within man's nature;"
but he is not condemned because he refuses faith in the whole
point of his apostolate the known Power outside man's
nature. He is told not to carry the Gospel to India but to
explore his "knowledgeable desire."
This brings me to remark that I was once reproved for an
essay on mystical poetry in which I called Mr. Abercrombie an
"egoistic skeptic." It would be well for me to explain that I
used the term not abusively but by way of definition. It is
only the limitation of space that prohibits me from quoting
page after page of what I venture to think is Lascelles Aber-
crombie's ablest book, his Speculative Dialogues, in triumphant
proof of my definition's accuracy. Here the content of his
metaphysics is boiled down, and so made accessible. What I
mean by "egoistic skeptic" will be made clear and, I hope,
justified if I bring forward instead the climax of "The
Fool's Adventure," which is taken from Interludes and
Poems:
1921.]
LASCELLES ABERCROMB1E
49
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Seeker.
Within.
Thus has Sin done with life,
Beseech thee, pen him close, far off, O Lord.
That would be hard to do.
Yet surely thou
Hatest this foul-toucht grimly Sin?
Sometimes
Full bitterly I hate him, and sometimes
He is my friend.
O my hurt soul, thy friend?
But thou hast power over him?
It may be.
And good and bad, these are thy mongery?
They are, as I have said.
None else controls them?
None else controls or portions Good and Bad.
Then thou art God?
Ay, many call me so.
And yet, though words were never large enough
To take me made, I have a better name.
Then truly, who art thou?
I am Thy Self.
VOL. CX1II. 4
ERRONEOUS THEORIES CONCERNING THE FUNCTIONS OF
THE STATE.
BY JOHN A. RYAN, D.D.
HE ultimate end of the State in the temporal order
is the public good, or public welfare. The proxi-
mate end comprises all those lawful means that
contribute to the attainment of the ultimate end.
They consist of political actions and institutions,
proceeding from the three great departments of government:
namely, the legislative, executive and judiciary. It is these
means that we have in mind when we speak of the functions
of the State.
Concerning these functions political writers *have advo-
cated three different theories. Of these the first two are ex-
treme and mutually opposed; the third occupies a middle
ground. Not without some inaccuracy, the first two are com-
monly known, respectively, as individualistic and socialistic.
The third theory has no fixed designation.
Inasmuch as the State operates through the political or-
ganization called the government, discussion of the State's
functions is necessarily discussion of the functions of govern-
ment. Hence the task before us is to describe, in outline, the
kinds of activities which the government may properly per-
form in order to attain the end of the State; that is, "to pro-
mote the welfare of the people as a whole, as members of
families, and as members of economic classes." This task can
be most satisfactorily undertaken by considering successively
the three theories noted above.
THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY.
The individualistic theory may be defined in general terms
as that which would reduce government functions to a mini-
mum. It frequently finds expression in the assertion, "the best
government is that which governs least." It conceives govern-
ment entirely, or almost entirely, in terms of restraint. Gov-
ernmental acts are thought of as restrictions upon individual
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 51
liberty. Government and its operations come to be regarded
as little better than necessary evils. Between this theory and
anarchism, the difference is one of degree rather than of kind.
While the various defenders of the theory differ somewhat in
their conceptions of the proper limitations of governmental
action, the great majority hold that it should merely preserve
order, enforce contracts, and punish crime. Hence their doc-
trine has been called in derision "the policeman theory of the
State." A more general name is the laissez-faire theory, which
denotes in particular its attitude toward government super-
vision of industry.
The roots of the individualistic theory are partly political
and economic, partly philosophical, and partly industrial.
Politically, it was a reaction against the excessive and harmful
restrictions of individual liberty by the governments of Europe.
The civil freedom of the masses was throttled in the interest
of the privileged classes. Commerce and industry were ham-
pered by a multitude of restrictions that had long outlived
whatever usefulness they once possessed. The latter half of
the eighteenth century witnessed a formidable reaction against
these restrictions. In France it found expression in the writ-
ings of the Physiocrats and in the principles of the Revolution;
in Great Britain it was championed by Adam Smith and other
economists with such extraordinary success that it was trans-
lated unmodified into acts of Parliament. 1 "All systems either
of preference or restraint being thus completely taken away,"
said Smith, "the simple and obvious system of natural liberty
establishes itself of its own accord." 2 In the United States of
America, the political philosophy of the day, the revolt against
the petty restrictions imposed by the British Government, and
the natural individualism of a pioneer people inhabiting a
land of exceptional opportunities, combined to make our
Government from the beginning a more thorough exponent
of the individualistic theory than those of England and
France.
In the realm of philosophy, the two most influential pro-
moters of the theory are probably Immanuel Kant and Herbert
Spencer. The Kantian principle of individual rights and
1 Cf. Ingram, History of Political Economy, pp. 89-93 ; Toynbee, Industrial Revo-
lution, pp. 11-26; Hammond, The Town Laborer, chs. vii. and x.
* The Wealth of Nations, Book IV., ch. ix.
52 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [April,
liberty is this : "Act externally in such a manner that the free
exercise of thy will may be able to coexist with the freedom of
all others, according to a universal law." 3 Hence the proper
and only function of the State is to protect men in the enjoy-
ment of their equal spheres of liberty. In practice this was
assumed to mean that men's rights of person and property
should be safeguarded against violence and fraud.
The principle of individual rights and liberty laid down
by Kant is substantially the same as that formulated by Herbert
Spencer : "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, pro-
vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." 4
However, Spencer arrived at this formula without being aware
of the similar maxim which Kant had enunciated many years
before. 5 The inference regarding State functions which
Spencer draws from his principle of individual rights and
liberty is substantially the same as that deduced by Kant.
"The greatest prosperity and multiplication of efficient indi-
viduals will occur where each is so constituted that he can
fullfil the requirements of his own nature without interfering
with the fullfilment of such requirements by others." 6 Hence
the sole duty of the State is "to insist that these conditions shall
be conformed to;" in brief, the State should not go beyond the
task of "maintaining justice." By induction, as well as by
deduction, Spencer arrives at the conclusion that "the primary
function of government is that of combining the actions of the
incorporated individuals for war, while its secondary function
is that of defending its component members against one
another." 7
Both Kant and Spencer conceived the functions of the
State in terms of coercion. Government has no other duty
than that of protecting rights and repressing injustice. It
should not go outside this province to promote the welfare of
individuals or classes by positive measures of State assistance,
whether in the field of religion, morals, education or industry.
While very few political writers and no governments any
longer consciously subscribe to the theories of these two
writers, a large section of the people, educated and unedu-
*Einleitung in die Rechtslehre, pp. 31, 68; Cf. Meyer, Institutiones Juris Naturalis
I., 525; II., 305.
4 Principles of Ethics, II., 46. Idem., Appendix A.
Idem., p. 221. T Idem., p. 207.
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 53
cated, is still considerably influenced by them on account of
the place which they have obtained in political, philosophical
and general literature. Kant, especially, gave a strong impetus
to the political and economic liberalism which was formerly
very powerful, and which is still dear to the hearts of the
bourgeois.
The industrial contribution to the individualistic theory is
to be found in the interests and influence of the capitalist
classes. Reference has been made above to the part played by
the economists in popularizing the doctrine and promoting its
enactment into law in the first quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury. More powerful even than the economists, was the new
capitalist class which arose during the Industrial Revolu-
tion.
So influential were the capitalists in shaping legislative pol-
icies at this period that the Combination Acts, passed at their
dictation, "remain the most unqualified surrender of the State
to the discretion of a class in the history of England." 8 "Let
alone" by the government, the capitalists were enabled, through
"free" contracts with the laboring population, to employ chil-
dren under the age of ten in factories, to require women and
children, as well as men, to toil for twelve, fourteen and even
sixteen hours per day, to injure the bodies and the health of
the employees through unsafe and unsanitary work places,
to pay starvation wages, and, in general, to exploit the workers
to the utmost limit of human endurance. Since they were
greatly and notoriously superior to the workers in bargaining
power, they were obviously interested in having the labor
contract unregulated by legal statutes. This attitude has been
taken by the employing classes of every industrial nation. As
regards government regulations of industry in the interest
either of the laborer or the consumer, they have been in great
majority champions of the individualistic theory.
So much space has been given to the origins of the indi-
vidualistic theory because the interest in it is now mainly his-
torical. In the form advocated by Kant and Spencer, it has
never been adopted by a modern State. Not even in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century England, nor in the first
half of the nineteenth century America, did the State confine
its activities to the protection of life and property and the en-
'Hammond, op. cit., p. 113.
54 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [April,
forcement of contracts. There was always some regulation of
industrial affairs in the interest of some class, some govern-
ment operation of public utilities, u. g., the postoffice, some
public provision for education, and some State protection of
public health and morals. With the exception of about half
a century of reaction, brought about by the political, economic,
philosophical and industrial factors above described, the policy
of all nations has been out of harmony with the individualistic
theory, and if the signs of our own time can be trusted, this
theory will command less respect twenty years from now than
it commands today.
From the side of reason and experience the arguments
against the individualistic theory are overwhelming. They are
drawn in part from the nature of man, and in part from the
defects of the individualistic assumptions.
The most extreme of these assumptions is that government
is merely a necessary evil. Government is conceived entirely,
or almost entirely, as a check upon individual liberty, and,
therefore, as regrettable if not abnormal. Now the truth is,
that the State and government are as natural as human asso-
ciation. Men cannot live in isolation; in society they cannot
live reasonable lives nor pursue self-development without the
State. This is a fundamental, normal fact of human nature,
as evinced by universal experience. It is a fact that the Cath-
olic Church has always recognized and proclaimed. She
teaches that the State is a necessary, not a voluntary, society,
and that it is as natural to man as the family or as organized
religion. The exponents of the individualistic theory proceed
from a false viewpoint and a false assumption concerning the
nature and needs of man in relation to the State. Were they
to estimate the facts of life without these prejudices, they
would realize that the State is a necessary means to right
living and human progress.
Their conception of government functions as almost ex-
clusively restrictive, is false in itself and false in its implica-
tions. Taking the latter point first, we perceive that the cur-
tailment of liberty is not necessarily nor always an evil thing.
It is not even a lesser evil. Not infrequently it is a positive
good. Individual liberty is a means, not an end. When it is
directed to evil purposes, to objects inconsistent with the true
welfare of its possessor, it is a bad thing for him. When it
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 55
inflicts injury upon the neighbor, it is likewise irrational.
And these perversions of liberty are sufficiently frequent to
require constant restraint by an adequate social agency. Such
an agency is provided by government. While negative in form
"thou shalt not" its regulations are ultimately positive and
constructive. It assures to men a larger measure of oppor-
tunity for right life than would be possible in its absence. The
limitation of liberty, is quite as normal as the exercise of
liberty. Hence due limitations, imposed by the State, are in
no sense an evil, nor even abnormal. It must be acknowledged
that the restrictions of individual liberty by many European
governments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were
tyrannical and destructive of human welfare; but this fact
does not warrant the inference that restriction itself is only a
species of necessary evil.
More serious, however, is the first point mentioned above,
the conception of governmental functions mainly in terms of
restraint. This viewpoint is gravely misleading, even as re-
gards regulations which are purely prohibitive. While a law
of this character is universal in form, requiring all persons
to refrain from the forbidden actions, it rarely, if ever, inter-
feres with the actual liberty or desires of the whole com-
munity. The law forbidding theft applies in form to all the
citizens, but it actually affects only a small minority; for the
great majority have no desire to steal. The liquor prohibition
law curtails the desired liberty of as large a proportion of the
population as any other restrictive statute, since a very numer-
ous section of the community wants to consume intoxicating
drink; nevertheless, a very large number, if not the majority,
attaches no importance to this freedom. The latter are not
practically affected by the prohibition law. Their liberty is
only hypothetically, not actually, diminished. The law forbids
them to do something which is outside of their desires. The
repeal of the law would give them a kind of liberty that they
do not regard as of any value. When we turn to the industrial
field, we find a very striking difference between the hypothet-
ical and the actual diminution of liberty. Laws which pro-
hibit the exploitation of child labor by employers, and the
imposition of extortionate prices upon consumers by a monop-
oly, restrict the potential or theoretical liberty of all persons,
since they carry no exemption for any class. Nevertheless,
56 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [April,
the persons whose freedom is actually lessened, constitute a
very small section of the population. The overwhelming ma-
jority could not or would not do the things which the law
forbids. In their case the law is no restraint upon actual
liberty.
Therefore, the first defect involved in the conception of
government as an agency of restraint consists in assuming
that restrictive legislation curtails the actual or the cherished
liberty of the whole community. The second defect is even
more serious and more delusive. It consists in the failure to
appreciate the positive aspect of prohibitive legislation. In
form, such legislation is negative, inasmuch as it declares that
men may not lawfully do certain things; but it has positive
objects and positive effects, inasmuch as it increases the actual
liberty and opportunity of all those persons who could not or
would not exercise the liberty which the law forbids, and who
would be injured through the exercise of such liberty by others.
For instance, child labor legislation increases the opportunities
and welfare of children; anti-monopoly laws are calculated to
increase the opportunity and welfare of the majority of the
population.
When men denounce industrial regulations of this sort
as restraints upon individual freedom, what they really
demand is that one class of persons should be left free
to oppress another, usually a larger, class of persons. In all
such situations the real conflict of desires and interests is not
between the government and the whole body of citizens, but
between two classes of citizens. Hence the reasonableness of
government interference with individual liberty cannot be de-
termined by the bare, technical fact of restraint. It is to be
sought in the effects which the law produces upon the rights
and welfare of the various classes that make up the com-
munity. How superficial and misleading, therefore, is the con-
ception of governmental functions mainly in terms of
restraint!
So much for the assumptions and prejudices underlying
the individualistic theory. Let us now consider its supreme
political formula; namely, that government should merely pre-
vent and punish violence and fraud and enforce contracts, or
that its sole function is the protection of rights. In passing,
it may be noted that the exponents of the theory are not
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 57
willing to have their formula applied in its full extension.
For example, the claim of the laborer to a living wage
is in the present industrial system one of man's natural
rights.
Yet the individualist would deny that the enforcement of
this right, by a minimum wage law, is a proper function of
government. In any case, the formula itself has no basis in
reason or in experience. If the end of the State is to promote
the common good, why should its benefits be restricted to one
class of goods? Men need protection against injustice, indeed,
but they have also a great variety of other needs. Religion,
morals, education and health, are at least as vital to human
welfare as physical integrity and private property. And the
inability of the individual to safeguard his welfare in respect
to the former goods, is frequently as obvious as in the case of
his corporal and property rights. Nevertheless, the individual-
ist would not permit the government to make adequate pro-
vision for man's welfare as regards religion, morality, educa-
tion or health. Such legislation he would condemn as outside
the legitimate province of the State. Surely this position is
artificial and illogical.
The individualistic principle of equal freedom is likewise
artificial. Moreover, it is impossible. It holds that the indi-
vidual should be free to do anything that he wishes, provided
that he does not interfere with the equal freedom of others.
But this principle is gratuitous and palpably false. Trans-
lated into governmental policy, it would permit adultery,
fornication, the teaching and propagation of obscenity, de-
ception, usury and all other forms of extortion. It would pro-
vide a paradise for every species of economic oppressor.
The man who desired to commit any of these crimes, could
logically claim immunity from governmental interference, on
the ground that he conceded the same liberty to everyone else.
This principle would be of great advantage to men who were
exceptionally vicious, exceptionally cunning and exceptionally
selfish. It would put at a disadvantage all those who did not
wish to exercise this kind of individual "liberty."
Nor is this all. At first sight, the principle of equal indi-
vidual liberty seems to authorize, or at least to permit, govern-
mental repression of such crimes as theft, assault and homi-
cide. In reality, it does nothing of the kind. For it is not
58 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [April,
based upon nor determined by objective considerations, such
as the safety of society or the maximum amount of human
welfare. Both Kant and Spencer express the principle in sub-
jective terms. The will of the individual is to determine the
limits and the application of the principle. "So act," says
Kant, "that the free use of thy liberty can coexist with the
liberty of everyone else according to a universal law." In
Spencer's formulation, "every man is free to do that which he
wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any
other man." Therefore, each individual is the authoritative
interpreter of the principle in his own regard. The man who
steals does not violate the principle, so long as he does not ask
the State to deny the same liberty to his fellows. The mur-
derer is likewise safe from interference, if he will concede to
other men the right of universal homicide. As pointed out
above, this principle should be peculiarly gratifying to the ex-
ceptionally vicious and exceptionally cunning; also to those
possessed of exceptional physical strength. Many, if not all,
such persons would welcome a regime of unrestrained compe-
tition in fraud and violence. With immunity from legal re-
straint, they would be willing to take all the risks of competing
in criminality with their less "efficient" fellows.
Admirers of Kant may question this interpretation of his
principle. They may claim that the phrase, "according to a
universal law," is an objective limitation upon the subjective
and arbitrary interpretation and exercise of individual liberty.
The claim cannot be allowed. The "universal law" which
Kant had in mind was not the moral law, nor the civil law, nor
the divine law. It was simply the universal law of liberty.
It could be violated only by the man who refused to grant to
others the liberty that he claimed for himself. Such a man
would be acting according to a particular, or exceptional, law
of liberty. But the man who was willing to concede the same
liberty to others, could indulge in wholesale acts of injustice
without violating the Kantian principle. Nor is it relevant to
object that such conduct, if universalized, would destroy human
society; for the Kantian principle does not recognize any
objective standard or consequence as the determinant of in-
dividual freedom. Each individual is authorized to apply the
principle according to his own desires and conceptions, un-
hindered by any consideration of social consequences.
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 59
THE SOCIALIST THEORY. 9
According to the programme of International Socialism,
the State would assume several new and very important func-
tions. These are mainly economic, but they also include a
large extension of State control over the family and education.
The Socialist theory holds that the State should own and
operate substantially all the means of production; that is, all
land used for commercial and industrial purposes, all mines,
all but the smallest farms, and all except the very small indus-
trial establishments and instruments of production and distri-
bution. The great majority of individuals engaged in agricul-
tural, industrial and commercial pursuits would be employees
of the State. The only kinds of business, whether in town or
country, owned and carried on by individuals, would be such
very small concerns as could be managed by one person or, at
most, by one person with the assistance of one or two em-
ployees.
From both the individual and the social viewpoint this
would be an undesirable extension of State functions. The
individual would be dependent upon the State throughout his
whole life, not merely for protection and economic opportun-
ity, but for his occupation and his livelihood. His only source
of income would be his salary, and for that he would be de-
pendent entirely upon the State. He could not choose between
that condition and the management of a business of his own.
At least, such would be the lot of the vast majority. On the
other hand, everything that entered into the individual's con-
sumption would have to be bought from the State. At present
the purchaser of goods can make a choice among competing
dealers. If he does not like a certain dealer or a certain kind
of commodity, he can supply his wants elsewhere or otherwise.
In a Socialist regime he would be compelled to select from
the small number of standardized articles provided by the
State. In a word, the State would be the only seller of goods,
as well as the only buyer of labor. Even if men obtained a
better and more secure livelihood in a Socialist society than
they now obtain, this advantage would not compensate them
for the lack of freedom in their economic contracts, and the
lack of that social power and that self respect which are
provided by private property.
C/. Hillquit-Ryan, Socialism: Promise or Menace? Skelton, Socialism. A Cnti
Analysis. Cathrein-Gettelmann, Socialism.
60 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [April,
The combination of political and industrial functions in
the State would place the individual entirely at the mercy of
bureaucrats and majorities. Human beings could not be
trusted to exercise justly this tremendous power. While the
people would, indeed, have the legal right and power to re-
move any set of officials at the elections, we must remember
that "the people" is never a simple entity, having only one
set of interests and acting unanimously. In political affairs,
"the people" that determine policies is never more than a part
of the whole population. It is at most a majority; sometimes
it is only a well organized minority. A national administration
that possessed the economic and political power conferred
by Socialism would be much more difficult to dislodge than
one possessing merely the authority conceded by our present
political system. Under Socialism a government could be
maintained in office indefinitely, through a combination of the
workers in the principal industries, and would be able to
subject the rest of the population to unlimited economic op-
pression.
The common good would be enormously impeded by the
attempt of the State to own and manage the means of pro-
duction. In the words of Pope Leo XIII., such an industrial
organization would produce universal "misery and degrada-
tion." The main reason is that the State would be unable to
command either the incentives or the discipline which are
necessary for efficient production. Under Socialism both the
directors and the directed would be remunerated entirely by
salaries. There would be no elastic and indefinite gain held
out before men as a stimulus to initiative, hard work and
efficiency. In the present system substantially business men
and a large proportion of those who are compensated by
salaries and wages, have some reason to hope that their re-
wards can be increased to an indefinite extent through their
own efforts. In a Socialist system this hope would all but
disappear. Even though increases in salaries and wages might
be appointed for those who exhibited a certain degree of pro-
ductivity, the arrangement would necessarily be operated in
such a rigid and routine fashion, and recognition of merit
would be so slow and halting, as to stifle incentive at its
source. The promptness with which efficiency is now re-
warded would be almost entirely wanting.
1921.] THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 61
Not only adequate incentive, but effective discipline would
be impossible. The great majority of men are lazy. To a
great extent they are kept working through the stimulus of
fear. They are afraid of losing their jobs. In a Socialist
regime the directors of industry would not have sufficient
power to discharge lazy and incompetent workmen, since their
own positions would be finally dependent upon the votes of
those under their direction. The only alternative is a militar-
istic organization of industry which could not long survive in
a democratic State.
The Socialist programme includes a large extension of
governmental control over the family and education. Indeed,
the majority of Socialists regard the child as belonging pri-
marily to the State. They look with favor upon a loosening of
the marriage bond, and the continuation of the marital union
only so long as the two parties think they love each other. The
disastrous effects upon the welfare and progress of the race
which would follow State usurpation of most important pa-
rental functions, and State encouragement to a system of free
love, are too obvious to require formal or detailed descriptions.
And State monopoly of education would be a most subtle and
destructive assault upon individual liberty.
The distrust of the State which underlies the individualist
theory, would be entirely justified if political society had an
inherent tendency toward the Socialist State. Happily, there
exists no such tendency. Indeed, it is only when the State is
prevented from exercising and developing its normal func-
tions that the danger of perversion into Socialism can become
considerable. The true and rational conception of State func-
tions avoids the vices and the extremes of Socialism no less
than of individualism. This conception will form the subject
of another article.
ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET.
BY JAMES F. CAS SIDY.
N the person of Columkille there is a striking
refutation of the fallacy that true Catholicism is
a poor soul-mate of patriotic instinct and poetic
inspiration. For his saintliness the seer of the
North is best remembered, for no son of the Gael
ever bestowed upon the conscience of the race a more
abiding impression than did this noblest son of the Hy Neill
clan. But essentially interwoven with this reputation for
sanctity is the tradition of his undying love for the land of his
fathers and his quenchless thirst for the lore begotten of the
bards. He loved his Creator first, but in that sublime affection
he beheld every reason for loyalty to the sacred cause of his
native land and the literature that its genius created.
Though we intend to devote our thoughts in this paper to
his passion for country and letters, we cannot proceed to our
subject without paying him the homage of a few words of
praise for his preeminent work as the spiritual regenerator of
his people. So great was to be the significance of his coming
to the Celt, that tradition has it Heaven itself revealed to
St. Patrick the wondrous worth of this giant in the army of
Christ. The Apostle, at the dictate of an angel, saw with pro-
phetic vision the great one who was destined to add lustre to
the work which he had begun. Looking to the northern home
of the saint of the future, he beheld a luminous object symbolic
of the great teacher from Uladh emitting a light that searched
all the recesses of the land of Erin. He witnessed "a light,
rising, not great at first, but waxing and rending asunder the
darkness, so that all Erin blazed therewith."
Thus did tradition dower the lips of Patrick with a tribute
to Columkille that conceded to the latter a Christianizing
potency as fundamental and complete as his own. And
Patrick's tribute was not destined to be futile. The Church of
our Saint's time was essentially monastic in character and, as
such, its life was completely molded by the genius of Colum-
kille. The monks throughout Celtic Christianity followed the
1921.] ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET 63
rule of the "Dove of the Church," and their adherence to his
discipline, according to the Venerable Bede, an Englishman,
endured for a century and a half and held the barriers of the
West against the Latinism of Benedictine monasticism. A
modern writer, the scholarly Montalembert, would still further
extend the period of the Irishman's occidental sovereignty and
give to his religious sceptre the controlling direction of the
policies and character of the Celtic Church for the space of
two centuries.
But the man was far from being submerged beneath the
saint. There always remained in him that magnificent human
outlook that never failed to find a magnetism in the cult of the
patriot, and a glamour in letters only second to that of
religion.
No Irish heart has ever been more closely wedded to the
mother heart of Eire than was that of Columkille; no name
was fated to be more jealously guarded within the sanctuary
of national recollection than the name of Uladh's royal Saint.
The glamour of his memory was dest led to hold for fourteen
centuries as powerful a sway over the imagination of the Gael
as ever belonged to the names of Patrick and Brigid. In the
words of Montalembert, the saintly trio have been always
"inseparably united in the dauntless heart and fervent, tena-
cious memory of the Irish people." And the reverence he won
was not greater than he deserved, for his love for his country-
men was dearer to him than life. It is he himself has told us
that the fire of patriotism that consumed him might prove the
undoing of his mortal frame. "Should sudden death overtake
me," he said, "it is for my great love of the Gael."
As a prince of the royal house of Niall, everything within
the territory over which his fathers ruled spoke to his heart
with that strong appeal of ancestral tradition always so wel-
come to the heart of the kin-loving Gael. As within his monas-
tery, so also without it, his authority had the collateral aspect
of the patriarchal, as well as the monastic, and clansman vied
with monk in paying him the homage of a subject, as well as
the reverence of a Christian.
Though all the land of Erin was very dear to his heart,
Ulster, the home of his ancestors, had a special appeal for him
as a tribesman as well as an Irishman. Unlike some Ulster-
men of today, who would pretend to put their province before
64 ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET [April,
their country, the tribal attitude of our Ultonian Saint enhanced
rather than injured his sense of nationalism. In being an
orthodox tribesman, he was but a wholesome factor in a
system which was the bed-rock on which Gaelic consciousness
of the spiritual and corporate individuality of the race was
founded. The tribal unit had all the elements of a rounded
and complete governmental and social system, yet what it
cherished in an especial way was the property of the congeries
of tribes, the nation. The preservation of the record of the
past was its dearest care, and this was brought to the knowl-
edge of the nation which held it in honorable remembrance,
as the product of an integral part of itself. In like manner the
laws, customs, learning and religion of the clan, through the
machinery of tribal life, became the mental acquisition of the
entire people, and proved to the race that these products of
many political units were in substance the life-expression of a
nation, single and undivided in spirit.
That Columkille loved especially those places associated
with his kin, we know from an abundance of evidence. A few
items from that evidence we shall produce here. An incident
replete with human gentleness has been transmitted to us to
show how true a child of the Gaelic clan great Colum was.
We take it from a sixteenth century life of him by O'Donnell.
Once he was faring by his dearly loved Assaroe and the dearth
of fish by the "winding banks of Erne" caused him grievous
pain because it was an affliction for those whose blood was his.
To relieve their sorrow, tradition would credit him with the
performance of a great miracle. In the words of his biog-
rapher: "Him it seemed great damage ... to his own dear
kinsmen in especiall to the which he bare great love, to wit,
the clan of Conall Gulban that there should not be abundance
(of fish) in the waterfall (of Assaroe) and the whole Erne. . .
And it was by reason of all this that Columkille blessed the
waterfall. . . And by reason of that blessing of Columkille's
it is the best river for fish in Erin today." 1
Though the white heat of his passion was for Ulster, a
fire of affection but little inferior to that burned within him
for Leinster. When the monarch, Aodh, wished to wreak
vengeance on the latter province and sought to win the favor
*Life of Columkille, by Manus O'Donnell, Ed. A. O'Kelleher and G. Shoepperle,
p. 135.
1921.] ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET 65
of the Saint for his enterprise, he failed, for the golden threads
of maternal affection endeared the folk of that kingdom to him
"That is difficult for me," was the Saint's reply to the king,
"for my mother was from Leinster."
But where no such obstacles intervened and the honor
of Uladh was at stake, he always prayed for the success of its
arms. Peaceful though the life was which he had chosen for
himself, the latent fires of his Celtic impetuosity would some-
times burst through the barriers of saintly instinct and place
his zest for battle in the ascendant. Such eruptions were fre-
quent enough to make his name an intimate part of the warp
and woof of the war-like traditions of Ireland. Even those
who have but a tyro's knowledge of Irish history are aware of
the fierce conflict he caused for the sake of a book, and the
dire penance of perpetual exile he endured as an expression
of sorrow for his deed.
But story is not content with limiting his interest in the
clashing ranks of warriors to the days of his mortal life. It
places to his credit a post-mortem anxiety for the welfare of
the battling Ultonians, whom in life he loved to see riding
proudly on the wings of Victory. For centuries after his death,
he was supposed to give to a sacred reliquary of his, that was
treasured by the O'Donnells, a kind of talismanic power that
carried with it victory for the army that observed the neces-
sary ritual associated with its use on the eve of battle. This
noted relic was called the Gathach. But tradition was not
content with maintaining that the Saint's influence upon the
fortunes of war was always, as in this instance, merely indirect.
It sometimes conscripted into the service of his province his
departed spirit and pictured it, as in the Battle of Allen,
making itself visible to the warriors to hearten them in the
conflict. Here his presence was most urgent, "for, above the
battalion of Leinster, he saw Brigid terrifying the hosts of
Conn's Half." 2 This was so strikingly tribal a conception of
Gaelic sainthood that the distinguished scholar, Whitley
Stokes, could not resist comparing it to that of the Greeks
which brought their tribal deities into the field where mortals
battled. As the Greeks of Homer's time considered their gods
so much part and parcel of their tribal life as to imagine them
partaking in their struggles, so the Gaels made the memory of
2 Revue Celtique, vol. xxiv., p. 53.
VOL. cxin. 5
66 Sr. COlUMKlLLE, PATRIOT AND POET [April
Golumkille such an intimate part of national tradition that
they made him an interested director of the clansmen's efforts
to win an earthly, as well as a heavenly, victory. If the desire
for their success was so enshrined in his heart during life,
surely, they thought, his departure for Paradise could not
make him oblivious of his kin when victory or red rout faced
them on the field. But they remembered, too, that his aid
could only come when justice was on their side, and the
greatest boon he willed them was the reward of a just war,
the victor's peace. It was his heart's desire "that there should
be peace forever amongst his kinsmen, the clan of Conall
Gulban, and that they should put away the folly and the
madness that were in them."
That glowing admiration of his for the "vinculnm san-
guinis" that so forcibly governed his attitude towards war, had
a kindred influence upon his conception of monastic govern-
ment. Every great monastery that owed allegiance to him
was a centre of family relations and served as a school or
asylum for all who claimed his kinship. This was most strik-
ingly in evidence in the great home of the monks at lona.
Anyone who takes the trouble to consult the genealogical table
of the early abbots of this monastery, can see that the abbacy
was, with a few exceptions, limited to a branch of the Tir-
connelian family. Besides abbots were preferably selected
even from the narrower circle of the founder's kin. This has
been ascertained about all the successors of the Saint with the
exception of one whose pedigree is doubtful and one whose
descent was from another house. As if to show that this was
the natural thing to expect, all those who exercised the spir-
itual jurisdiction of the founder of lona retained "Successor
of Golumkille" as their most jealously-guarded title. It em-
bodied a dignity that was more potent than anything abbatial,
for it called on the monk for an allegiance that was as much
a product of the clan system as of the atmosphere of the
monastery.
Just as the warrior in him gave his character an intensely
Irish coloring, many of the great deeds, by no means war-like,
which he is supposed to have performed, make us think of the
days when the druid was in power. As if to prepare the people
for the coming of a man who would harbor in a Christian heart
many of the pagan's principles of action, pre-Christian Ireland
1921.] ST. COLUMKILLK, PATRIOT AND POET 67
took unto itself the privilege of foretelling his advent. "Not
alone was it the saints of Erin and the patriarchs having the
spirit of prophecy of God that did foretell the coming of
Columkille, but druids and such as had not the faith foretold
a long time ere his birth that he should come." 8 When he
came many of the things he wrought seemed to justify this
pagan interest in him.
When, for instance, he arrived for the first time at lona,
he told his followers of the need of rearing his church upon the
blood of some of them. Such words more fit the lips of a
druid than of a Christian missionary, yet story did not hesi-
tate to give them to him. In the same spirit it would represent
him as raising from the dead a pagan craftsman, Connla, to
give the finishing touches of a skilled hand, that no living Chris-
tian could impart, to the shrine. Tradition would even have
him unearth the lost materials of Erin's ancient epic, the Cattle
Raid of Cooley, through the agency of the old Red Branch here,
Fergus MacRigh, long gone from earthly scenes. At his sum-
mons Fergus came back from the realm of the dead to recite
the stirring tales connected with the Raid, that Irishmen might
have a deathless record of their heroic past.
But it is only when we hear Colum, the exile, speak that
we receive the most sublime and human expression of passion
for his country. It has been said that human beauty garbed
in sad robes can possess a far greater appeal than when
arrayed in smiling habiliments. We cannot help thinking
that this was true of the patriot heart of Columkille when he
mourned. Never does the glory of his affection for his land so
powerfully manifest itself as when it was mated with the
pang of exile. The sorrow that seized him on being divorced
from the land of his fathers threw a gloom o'er his life that
was never dispelled. When the love-bonds that fastened him
to Ireland were about to be broken, and his little boat was
ready to put out for Scotland, a wave of utter dereliction
swept across his soul, and, as the wail of the people of Conall
and Owen burst in upon him, he told in bardic fashion of the
depth of his woe:
Since I am to leave mine own kinsmen,
I shall give them to know of my secret:
8 Manus O'Donnell, op. cit., p. 27.
68 ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET [April,
A night shall not pass, I conceal not,
That tears shall not come to mine eyes.
Since my leaving the folk of the Gael,
On whom I have set my affection,
It is naught to me though but one night
Were the length of my life days thereafter.
As replete with the wine of human feeling are his thoughts
of his beloved Derry, where kindly heart and fascinating oak
won the homage of his man and nature loving soul.
Derry of the oaks, let us leave it
With gloom and with tears, heavy-hearted;
Anguish of heart to depart thence,
And to go away unto strangers.
Great is the speed of my coracle,
And its stern turned upon Derry;
Woe to me that I must on the main,
On the path to beetling-browed Alba.
The humblest monk that left lona for the shores of Ireland
he regarded as highly privileged.
On a certain occasion he sent Baithen to consult with his
kinsmen in Erin, and poignant was his grief that the lot of
his messenger was not his. Before he dispatched his envoy,
the thoughts that arose within him he expressed in a poem
which told of his love unto death for his fatherland, its abso-
lute claims on himself and all his glory, and the pangs that
exile caused him:
O man that goeth westward to Erin,
My heart in my side is broken;
If sudden death overtake me,
It is for the greatness of love of the Gael.
To the Gaels myself,
To the Gaels my honour,
To the Gaels my learning,
To the men of Erin my glory.
My blessing on thee, western island,
My heart in my bosom is swollen,
Lamenting the seed of great Eogan,
Lamenting the children of Gonall.
1921.] ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET 69
But in death, if not in life, he was determined to be united to
the land of his fathers, there to wait the judgment hour with
the men of the Gael.
They shall bury me first at lona;
But by the will of the living God,
It is at Dun that I shall rest in my grave
With Patrick and with Brigid, the immaculate,
Three bodies in one grave.
Like every patriotic Irishman, Columkillei cherished a
deep affection for his country's national culture. This culture
utilized poetry as its most characteristic mode of expression,
and it was in this phase of its activity that the Saint was most
interested. He was a special friend of the bards and many
stories of his association with and admiration for them, sur-
vive. On a certain occasion, as he was going to cut wood for
the church at Derry, there came to him a poet asking for a gift.
The Saint, having nothing with him, told the bard that if he
returned home with him he would give him what he desired.
This the latter unreasonably refused to do, and threatened to
satirize Golumkille. So greatly did the Saint dread the national
disgrace of being the target of bardic invective that a heavy
sweat streamed from his brow, which a miracle turned into
gold to preserve untarnished his good name amongst the com-
panies of the poets of Erin. When, finally, the conduct of
bards became so insolent, that the nation rose in its wrath and
threatened to expel them from the land, their old-time friend
intervened to save them. He could not see the devotees of
the poetic art condemned to eat the bread of exile, and he
saved them by the might of his influence at the Convention
of Drum Geat from the bitterest sorrow that a true Gelt could
endure.
Had he not intervened, the class that gave such sweetly
sad and nationally stimulating ideas to Ireland, from the
sixth to the seventeenth century, might have been banished
and their country sentenced to an irreparable misfortune. For
the favor conferred on them, these poets were overflowing
with gratefulness. In recompense for what they had received,
they bestowed upon Golumba the most treasured gifts they
possessed, laudatory poems. The old writer tells us that so
strongly did this typically bardic act appeal to the Celtic
70 ST. COLUMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET [April,
nature of the Saint, a glow of pride filled his heart and merited
for him a rebuke from a holy companion. It was, however,
only one of a multitude of similar acts which merited for
Columba the reputation of being "weak in indulging bards
and poets on account of their art and because of the praises
which they made for him."
This admiration for the professionals of the poetic art
was intensified by the fact that Golumkille himself was a poet.
He is regarded as truly representative of the saints of Erin
in this sphere as is Ossian of the Fianna. Besides three Latin
poems, there are numerous productions in the Gaelic tongue
attributed to his pen. Twenty-five of these have been edited
and a far greater number are hidden in manuscripts awaiting
similar treatment.
In all these poems, as in his other activities, there is ob-
servable a decidedly Celtic strain. Despite the appeal which
Latin, with its great cultural history, must have possessed for
him, he decided to use his native language as his favorite
medium of expression. The Celtic element in him rendered
him largely oblivious of Latin traditions when he sought to
express his ideas on national themes. He has the supreme
merit of being the first writer of non-classic literature who
has dealt with patriotism and exile. His poems are replete
with the themes and modes of thought so characteristic of
Gaelic writers. He revels in the beauties of the physical
world, and uses in abundance that austerity and simplicity of
scenic coloring in which Irish writers excel. For the wild sea,
with its message of freedom and purity, he has a marked
predilection :
Delightful to be in Benn-Edar
Before crossing over the white sea,
(To see) the dashing of the wages against its brow,
The bareness of the shore and its border.
Derry he loved for its peaceful oaken retreats and the
sweet thoughts of his God that stole into his soul as he strolled
through its bird-haunted ways. With vehemence of soul, he
prayed for its welfare and safety:
My Derry, my Derry, my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home and my own little cell,
1921.] ST. COLVMKILLE, PATRIOT AND POET 71
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes and defend thee well.
In another poem, vibrant with emotion at the thought of
exile from Burrow, he tells with a pen as truly steeped in
the nature atmosphere of Celtic literature as ever bardic quill
had been, of the pain that severance from its peaceful retreats
had caused him. Fondly, he dwells on music-laden place-
names, the voice of the swans, the weird sea-notes of the gulls,
the playing of the harpist-winds upon the elms, the meditative
sounds of grazing cattle on the dew-sprent fields at dawn and
the elusive, spirit-like notes of the wandering cuckoo :
It were delightful, O Son of my God, with a moving train,
To glide o'er the waves of the deluge
fountain, to the land of Erin;
O'er Moy-n Rolarg, past Ben-Eigny, o'er Loch Feval,
Where we should hear pleasing music from the swans.
The hosts of the gulls would make joyful, with eager singing,
Should it reach the port of stern re-
joicers, the Dewy Red.
I am filled with wealth without Erin, did I think it sufficient,
In the unknown land of my sojourn, of sadness and distress.
Alas, the voyage that was enjoined me, O King of secrets,
For having gone myself to the battle of Cuil.
How happy the son of Dima, of the devout church,
When he hears in Durrow, the desire of his mind,
The sound of the wind against the elms, when 'tis played,
The blackbird's joyous note, when he claps his wings :
To listen at early dawn in Ros-Grencha, to the cattle;
The cooing of the cuckoo from the tree, on the brink of Summer.
With this love of nature he also coupled that other strik-
ing characteristic of Gaelic poetry, the note of prophecy. The
future has always appealed to the Celt as a subject for specu-
lation, because as Renan tells us "the essential element in the
Celt's poetic life is the adventure, that is to say, the pursuit
of the unknown, an endless quest after an object ever flying
from desire," and unborn time is an apt sphere for such a
hunter. Such a quarry did our royal Saint seek. As a man of
great sanctity, he was credited with an extraordinary insight
into the future; as a Gael, by nature curious and anxious to
probe the things yet hidden beneath the veil of futurity, he
72 A SAINTS PORTRAIT [April,
often sought to test his supernatural prowess in this respect.
Prophecies in countless numbers have been placed to his
credit, and his name is yet treasured in Ireland as4hat of one
in whom ability to solve the future's secrets seemed an insep-
arable property of saintliness.
Dear as is his memory to the Gael of today, it should be
a much more vital force in his national life than it is.. To very
many Irishmen it is a name and nothing more. It should be
intimately known to all the sons and daughters of Ireland, that
their greatest saintly patriot's life may still more confirm their
loyalty to religion and fatherland.
A SAINTS PORTRAIT.
I THINK of music strong and quiet ... so quiet.
There was a great war once; and suffering
In darkness has eliminated youth
And easy gladness from her countenance.
Some natures are transparent, and as light
Attain their heaven. But the ivory
Of her most noble face is deeply lined
The necessary anguish is revealed
That brought her to the peace now surely hers.
There is decision in those calm yet burning eyes
And in the steady purpose of her mouth.
I know this fine decision has been won.
Her passions were too vast to lead or guide
She met these foes, and fought them day and night,
For many years, oft horrified, but never
In despair. She learned herself; . . . and God
Who loves true courage, watched and fired her zeal,
And has rewarded her. O loving, lovely,
And so lovable! In her, benignity,
Long-suffering and deep humility,
Make music that is only heard on high
When a great soul is lifted up to God.
FROM THE DARK AGES.*
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S.
N the dark ages of criticism of the Catholic
Church, if indeed the term criticism can with
justice be applied to such proceedings, it was
common to cast any and every accusation at that
venerable institution without troublesome regard
to its truthfulness or the reverse. The work with which we are
dealing is a fine sample of the mid-eighteenth century dark
ages to which we allude. It is true that the date 1919 alone
appears on the title-page, which gives no indication that this
is a second or later edition. But other evidence in the book
makes it obvious that it was written, we may suppose, prior
to and published in 1874, so that it is not exactly in the first
freshness of its youth.
Having regard to the date just mentioned and to the
ordinary passage of human life, we seem entitled to assume
that the author of this work has departed to another world
where he will have discovered, what we gather from the
preface and indeed other parts of the book, he never suspected
during his life, namely that there were things as to which he
was quite ignorant. No editor's name is attached to this
edition; perhaps it had none. If editor there was, he had,
when confronted with his task, several alternatives before him.
He might, for example, have issued his book with some such
foreword the fashionable term today as this: "This is a
curious and historically interesting example of the customs
and criticisms of a bygone day which cannot but be valuable
to students of archaeology and, as it is republished in their
interests, it has been reprinted with all its burden of inac-
curacies on its shoulders." Or he might have appended a
series of notes, pointing out the errors and their necessary cor-
rections, though to be sure this would have meant a pretty
big book. Or he might have omitted the mistakes which would
have left quite a small one. Or he might have endeavored to
*The Conflict Between Religion and Science. By John William Draper, M.D.,
LL.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1919.
74 FROM THE DARK AGES [April,
re-write the passages which were out of date or inaccurate,
but such a piece of patchwork would have been a parlous task
in the case of a fabric whose warp is prejudice and whose woof
is ignorance.
None of these expedients has been adopted and we regret
it, for surely no competent editor would have allowed a num-
ber of the statements to pass without some comment. For
example, to select one from many instances, he would not
have omitted to warn his readers, when allowing a long quo-
tation to appear from a work on Human Physiology pub-
lished in 1856 (!) that, though the pen that wrote that work
was the pen of Dr. Draper, physiology is a science which has
made huge strides in seventy years and no part of it huger
strides than that which the quotation refers to, namely the
physiology of the nervous system.
The author of the book seems to have felt at variance with
almost every form of religion and with most leaders of these
forms, though he makes no secret that his heart is with the
heresiarchs of all kinds and the more heretical the better. He
would like to love Luther, "a sturdy German monk," but
Luther said some uncivil things about science as he was apt to
do about anything which did not follow his sic jubeo. Of
course, the real villain of the piece is the Catholic Church, to
which the author, like others of his kidney, pays the real but
quite unintentional compliment of seeing that it is the one
religious organization which knows its own mind; which has
a clear idea of its own commission; which is not afraid to lay
down principles, and which never swerves from them when
once they have been laid down.
Again, in true conformity to type, he is ready to embrace
anyone however heretical, even non-Christian, Mohammed
for example, whose "form of God was perhaps more awful
than that of paganized Christianity," by which flower of
speech he indicates the Church of Christ. And this, although
a line lower down he is constrained to tell us that the Moham-
medan heaven is a "palace of Oriental carnal delight" and was
"filled with black-eyed concubines and servants" 2 whom, it
would appear, are not in any way incompatible with the awful-
ness of the deity whose heaven they adorn.
Averroes is one of the objects of his admiration, and he is
*lbld. t p. 86.
1921.] FROM THE DARK AGES 75
quite ruffled because the Lateran and Vatican Councils anath-
ematized his teachings, which, he comforts himself by stating
are "still held to be true by a majority of the human race "
Here, we take it that the author is alluding to pantheism, in
which, as we well know, all false philosophies, including the
Draperian variety, end. But we note that his admiration for
Averroes has not led him to mention some of the less admir-
able teachings of that philosopher, such as that there can be
two kinds of truth, scientific and philosophical, an enormity
which we have recently seen saddled upon Scholastic philos-
ophers, who would have protested vigorously, as they did in-
dignantly protest against it, when its Arabian formulator
brought it before the learned world.
Nestorius again was a man much to be admired, and his
opponent, St. Cyril, was everything that was bad. "This was
that Cyril who had murdered Hypatia." 8 Let us pause a
moment over this statement. When a writer is attacking an
institution, especially one so venerable, so beloved by, and so
great a consolation to its adherents as the Catholic Church;
especially when he is essaying to prove that institution to be
built upon a foundation of lies and nurtured and sustained
by falsehood and infamy and such is the charitable thesis
Dr. Draper works upon surely we may ask that he himself
shall be irreproachable in his historical facts; accurate in his
scientific assertions and fully informed of the technicalities of
the institution he sets out to criticize and, if he can, demolish.
On this platform we propose to examine his work and we think
we can show that, from all these points of view, it is wholly
unworthy of a moment's consideration by any serious student.
The task entails a tedious and disjointed collection of in-
stances selection, perhaps one might say, for many are left
behind reluctantly for want of space. Let us attack the task
and commence with the quotation we have just given. Cyril
murdered Hypatia. History, unfortunately for Dr. Draper, is
quite definite as to the name of the murderer of this misused
woman; it was Peter, the Lector or Reader, as Dr. Draper calls
him. "No doubt," we suppose he would reply, "but Peter was
merely Cyril's tool." Socrates, the historian, who is our in-
formant as to these occurrences, a very impartial writer, did
not take this view, for he makes no kind of mention of St.
'Ibid., p. 72.
76 FROM THE DARK AGES [April,
Cyril in connection with it. Further, let us remember that
by the regulations of the African Church a Lector was not a
cleric and, therefore, was not under St. Cyril's control. Let
us take another historical case.
Dr. Draper tells us that Pelagius a heresiarch and, there-
fore, no doubt one of the best of men was condemned as a
heretic by Pope Innocent I. and that "his successor, Zosimus,
annulled his judgment, and declared the opinions of Pelagius
to be orthodox." 4 On this follows the usual fling at Papal
infallibility, a subject the A, B, C, of which, as we shall show,
the author had never grasped. But as to the history? Well,
it is a fine example of that peculiarly dangerous form of lie
which is half the truth. Briefly: Innocent did condemn Cseles-
tius and Pelagius and what he understood to be their opinions.
They appealed to Rome, where Zosimus by this time was reign-
ing Pontiff. He did not withdraw or annul his predecessor's
condemnation of the opinions. What he did was to ask that
it should be made plain to him that the condemned opinions
were actually held by Pelagius. The heresiarch made state-
ments which led the Pope to think that he had been misjudged,
and he was restored to communion. The African Church,
better informed than the Pope, protested. Zosimus ordered a
further inquiry on this point, which was held by the Council
of Carthage; Pelagius' final condemnation following in due
course.
Bruno 5 was condemned to death, "the special charge
against him being that he had taught the plurality of worlds."
We do not condone the burning of Bruno, but as a matter of
historical fact the propositions for which he really was con-
demned were that Our Saviour was not God, but a particularly
skillful and successful magician; that the Holy Spirit was the
soul of the world; that the devil would be saved and such other
statements, after reading which we cannot wonder that a
Protestant writer should exclaim that, eminent man though
Bruno was, "he had not a trace of religion." Of course, Dr.
Draper deals with Copernicus and with Galileo, and his ac-
count of both of them simply bristles with errors. We have
only space to notice two, both glaring in their character.
Copernicus' book was condemned, he tells us. So it was,
but an historian of average fairness would have also told us
*lbid., p. 56. 'Ibid., pp. 178-181.
1921.] FROM THE DARK AGES 77
what Dr. Draper does not, that the condemnation did not take
place until seventy-two years after Copernicus' death and the
issue of his book (the two were absolutely simultaneous);
that it arose entirely out of the episode of Galileo and would
otherwise almost certainly never have taken place, and that it
consisted in an order that nine passages only should be omitted
or altered, which passages spoke of the heliocentric theory-
then and for a hundred years afterwards a mere unproved
theory as definite fact. Nor has he the common honesty to
tell his readers that as soon as these small changes had been
made, the condemnation of the book was withdrawn.
Galileo was "committed to prison, treated with remorseless
cruelty during the remaining ten years of his life, and was
denied burial in consecrated ground." 6 No choicer collection
of absolute falsehoods ever appeared elsewhere in the same
number of lines. Galileo's first "prison" was the villa of the
Grand Duke of Tuscany near Rome. From this he was re-
moved to be the guest (literally, not sarcastically) of the Arch-
bishop of Siena. Then he was allowed to return and reside
at his own villa at Arcetri, near Florence, though at first he
was not permitted to visit that city. Later still, he was not
only allowed to do this but to reside there in his son's house.
So much for his cruel treatment in prison. He died fortified
by all the Sacraments and the special blessing of Pope Urban
VIII., and lies buried in the Church of Santa Croce.
What is to be said of the person who comes forth as the
champion of truth and accuracy and who is capable of mis-
statements so flagrant as these?
What again are we to say of the historian who tells us
that St. Peter "doubtfully died at Rome" and that Diocletian's
persecution was caused by a "mutiny," 7 the fact being that cer-
tain Christian soldiers had refused to sacrifice to Pagan deities
surely no breach of military discipline. We should be glad
to find space to deal with the old, worn-out, oft-exposed state-
ment that the ceremonies of the Church are mere modifications
and adaptations of heathen ceremonies. We cannot do that
nor can we ask at least so we surmise Dr. Draper to read
the treatment of this point by Mr. Mallock not a Catholic-
in Is Life Worth Living? but we can ask anyone who requires
illumination on the subject to consult that remarkable work.
/Wd..p. 172.
78 FROM THE DARK AGES [April,
Dr. Draper poses as an authority on science. Very well,
"ad Csesarem appelasti, ad Cxsarem ibis!"
"It seems to be satisfactorily established that a race allied
to the Basques may be traced back to the Neolithic age." 8
The statement is a little involved, but it clearly indicates an
attempt to state the ethnological relations of the people in ques-
tion. Well, there are four views on the subject, and that
which he tells us is "satisfactorily established," is, perhaps, the
least likely of the four and is in no sort of way "established"
at all.
Investigation "indisputably refers the existence of man to
a date remote from us by many hundreds of thousands of
years." 9 There are, it is true, those who, on very inadequate
grounds as we think, would claim as many as three hundred
thousand years or more. But, on the other hand, sober author-
ities, such as Sollas, Professor of Geology at Oxford, and the
Abbe Breuil, certainly the leading authority of the day on pre-
historic archaeology, content themselves with some thirty thou-
sand, so that Dr. Draper's "indisputably" is clearly a gross
misstatement.
One last example: "It is difficult to assign a shorter date
for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of million
years." 10 "Difficult" or not, the recent observations on the
laminated clays of South Sweden seem definitely to establish
the fact that the ice left the spot now occupied by the Univer-
sity of Stockholm some nine thousand years ago. Further, the
lessons taught by the Niagara Gorge give us an even more
recent date than this for the disappearance of the ice in that
district of North America.
"Dr. Draper is dead, and it is unfair to attack him for not
knowing things which have been found out since he died."
So we can imagine someone saying. As far as some of these
points go it is not Dr. Draper whom we are attacking, but
those who were so careless of his reputation as to permit the
book to appear with such glaring errors and without the indi-
cation of its date which was due the public. But then, as the
reader may very properly remark, there are so many errors
that a few more or less can scarcely matter.
One more point under this heading. The author argues
that the statements of Genesis and the findings of science
Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 199. 10 Ibid., p. 19S.
1921.] FROM THE DARK AGES 79
cannot in any way be reconciled, and the more we study them
the more divergent we find them. 11 Romanes, whilst still an
agnostic, stated in Nature that "the order in which the flora
and fauna are said, by the Mosaic account, to have appeared
upon the earth corresponds with that which the theory of evo-
lution requires and the evidence of geology proves." The
writer of the Mosaic account was certainly not there to see
these things happen: is it any wonder that a distinguished man
of science (Ampere) should have exclaimed: "Either Moses
was inspired or he knew as much about science as we do
today!"
Painfully conscious that our examination of this work is
more and more approximating to the schoolmaster's list of
schoolboy "howlers" which we see from time to time in the
columns of the press, we must now turn to the author's mis-
takes as to the institution he is criticizing.
And first for two elementary blunders which would not
be made by a Catholic child aged ten. "Immaculate concep-
tion" is confused with a divine procreation, so common a myth
in Pagan story. It is hard to credit that an educated man could
make such a mistake but there it is 12 for all to read and wonder
at. "Infallibility which implies omniscience" 13 ought to have
informed the Pope as to how the Franco-Prussian war would
terminate ! Can a greater depth of ignorance ever be plummed?
Let us explore this region of knowledge, or ignorance, a
little further. "No one did more than [St. Augustine] to bring
science and religion into antagonism." 14 Yet curiously
enough, no one is more quoted today than that self -same Saint
when it is desired to show that the teachings of the Church in
no way conflict with those of science when both are properly
formulated.
We are told that the globular form of the earth was
denied by the Church (and it is a matter of fact that many
early Churchmen and others were ignorant of its sphericity)
and the contrary had been so firmly held that the Popes who
had apparently infallibly proclaimed its flatness, though we
are not told where or when were very grievously embarrassed
when the contrary was discovered to be the case, and espe-
cially after the voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498. 15 It is more
"Ibid., paraphrase of pp. 218 et. seq.
lbtd. t p. 8. 7Mrf..p. 352.
15 Ibid., paraphrase from pp. lao-lbd.
80 FROM THE DARK AGES [April,
than a little difficult to see how all this tallies with the un-
questioned fact that Blessed (please note the Blessed!) Al-
bertus Magnus had, in the thirteenth century, brought forward
a number of the proofs of the earth's sphericity which are
commonplaces today. We think Dr. Draper must have got
muddled (an easy thing for a not very clear-sighted student
of history) over the story of St. Virgilius (Fergil or O'Farrell) ,
Bishop of Salzburg, an early Irish wanderer, and St. Boniface.
The matter is too long to be dealt with here, but it in no way
bears the construction which we suppose Dr. Draper to have
placed upon it.
Our author's statements as to the attitude of the Church to
the question of Evolution, and especially as to Providence and
Natural Law (over which he makes very heavy weather) , can-
not be dealt with, though they afford excellent examples of the
complete absence of grasp of his subject of which we com-
plain.
Nor can we deal as faithfully with him as we should have
liked over the well-worn topic of the Spanish Inquisition,
wherein we have rehearsed once more all the old stories and
exaggerations. The Spanish Inquisition, we freely admit, was
not an organization to be commended. It went even beyond
the worst examples of its period a period, let it be remem-
bered, when both Catholics and Protestants considered the
stake as the proper treatment for heretics. We cannot think
that de Maistre's thesis that it was a purely civil institution
can be sustained, but this is quite certain that it hung far
more loosely from the Papal control than most things of its
kind, and that Popes, notably Sixtus IV., spoke their minds
very strongly as to its excesses. Dr. Draper characteristically
tells us that over ten thousand persons were actually burned
under Torquemada. A recent Protestant investigator, Peschel,
makes it two thousand bad enough, but not up to the Dra-
perian standard.
Let us now turn to another series of extraordinary per-
versions of history. We are told that (apparently some date
in the fifteenth century is alluded to) "the Papal government
established two institutions: 1. The Inquisition; 2. Auricular
confession the latter as a means of detection, the former as
a tribunal for punishment." 16 And, that there may be no sort
"Ibid., p. 207.
1921.] FROM THE DARK AGES 8 1
of mistake as to the allegation, elsewhere the confessional is
described as a tribunal which makes "the wife and daughters
and servants of the suspected, spies and informers against
him." 1 Again, we are told that the necessity for confession
was formally established by the Lateran Council 18 and that
"at the end of the thirteenth century a new kingdom was
discovered, capable of yielding immense revenues. This was
Purgatory." 19
Now what are we to think of all these statements? Pur-
gatory was discovered in the thirteenth century. Yet St. Am-
brose and St. Augustine both discussed this topic; Tertullian
tells us that prayers for the dead (meaningless without Pur-
gatory) were of Apostolic ordinance; Origen alludes to it.
Curious, is it not? Since all these were in their graves many
centuries before the thirteenth. And as to the confessional,
St. Athanasius is a tolerably well known and certainly early
authority. As to the allegation against the secrecy of the con-
fessional, the more than innuendo that things revealed sub
sigillo can be and are repeated to the disadvantage of the
penitent, we will only say this: the accusation is so palpably
false and so confessedly unjust that today, at least, it is left
in the hands or mouths of "ex-nuns," "escaped monks," and
other such base fellows of the lewder sort. We fancy we re-
member that it was from time to time met with in somewhat
higher, though not by any means the highest, circles in 1876.
But, please note, this is a work dated on its title-page 1919,
and with no indication there, that this is not the first time
it has seen the light.
Of course, we have the inevitable cry that the Church and
Science are absolutely incompatible. 'Then has it come in
truth to this, that Roman Christianity and Science are recog-
nized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incom-
patible; they cannot exist together one must yield to the
other; mankind must make its choice, it cannot have both." 2
Greater rubbish and more absolute falsehood never fell from
the pen of ignorant bigot. Who are the adherents who have
made such statements? Nowhere are we told. Huxley said
something like it in his day and from his very mistaken point
of view, but Huxley does not seem to have existed for Dr.
Draper. And, in any case, a score of books then and since
/bM., p. 366. /&M., P. 208. Ibid., p. 278. "Ibid., p. 363.
VOL. CXIII. 6
82 THE SLEEPING BEAUTY [April,
have shown that Huxley was entirely mistaken. We must
suppose that Dr. J. J. Walsh's The Popes and Science was
unknown to Dr. Draper, but it has been before the world for
some time; it was accessible to those who are responsible for
this edition; and it, and a number of other books which might
be named, absolutely and finally dispose of this, and much
more of the rubbish with which Dr. Draper's book is
loaded.
Let us suggest to those who want a brief refutation, that
it was a Pope who directed Catholics to welcome every new
discovery regardless of the source from which it came, and
that it was a most distinguished man of science and a devout
Catholic, de Lapperent, who stated that no one had ever
felt more free in his scientific work and writings than
had he.
Surely, we have said enough to show the kind of book
with which we have been dealing. It will sell of course any
attack on the Church will do that. It will be read by many
ignorant persons not so many as would have been the case
had it not been of such inspissated dullness. These cannot
judge, and will not try to ascertain, the truth of the statements
contained in it which we have criticized. It is, in our opinion,
nothing short of lamentable that such a book should have ap-
peared in a series which has in the past enriched the reading
world with so many valuable contributions to knowledge.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.
BY CHARLES J. QUIRK, S.J.
IN faery castle, 'neath the snow,
Couched 'mid fair flowers deep,
The Princess Summer waits young Spring
To break the thrall of sleep.
THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF.
BY CHARLES A. FERGUSON.
WAY up under the lee of the "Hill of God," look-
ing down over the Pass, stands a harsh, gray stone
sheiling surrounded by deserted sheep pens
formed by dry stone dykes covered with lichen
and moss. Below the gray mists lie heavy,
and the salt winds borne in from the sea sough mournfully
through the clump of scraggy firs that back the sheiling. The
surrounding mountains are rugged, scarred by great rocks and
bowlders and deeply pitted with channels scored in their sides
by the melting snows in spring. In summer these channels
are dry; in winter they are filled to the brim with snow, and
in spring they become rushing torrents, leaping madly down,
hurrying to join the river in the glen below.
The country is but sparsely populated. Here and there,
by a burn or on a crag, stands a castle or fortified house, grim
and gray, with small deep^ set windows and a heavy nail
studded door set high in the wall. Hard by the blue smoke
rises curling from the clauchan, a row of deep thatched cottar
houses straggling along an indifferent road with a weather-
beaten kirk and a wind-swept yard at one end and a change-
house at the other. The houses are built of big stones and
roofed with thick thatch well weighted against the bleak,
strong winds that swirl down the glens. Higher up in the
lonelier places snuggling close to the sides of the mountains
stand the sheilings of the shepherds. The buildings are all
born of the soil and are plain, stern and forbidding.
Up in the sheiling, in a lonely place under the shadow of
the great mountain, abode, for a time, Allister Stewart, last
chief of his race. His lands were attainded, a price put on
his head, and he was a fugitive because of his loyalty to his
prince and to his king.
After that sad day on Culloden Moor and the ruth
useless slaughter of loyal hearts by the bloody butcher, Cum-
berland, Allister had refused to escape to France and security,
and had chosen rather to abide by the remnant of his clan and
84 THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF [April,
share their fortunes. Slowly and grimly they fought their
way from the stricken field and wandered back to their own
country, where they scattered and hid among the hills.
Allister and Black Rab, his foster brother, spent the winter
in the sheiling and were supplied with food and other neces-
sities by their clansmen. As it drew near to Easter, Allister
determined to cross the mountains and go to Moreclad on the
edge of the Moor of Rannoch to hear Mass. The risk was
great, for his house of Baloan, which was held by a company
of soldiers who were hunting him, lay on the other side of
the glen, but a gunshot from the church. The church stood on
a slope surrounded by a little graveyard where many genera-
tions of Stewarts slept. Their time-stained tombstones, with
their many pious inscriptions, filled the space from the walls
of the church to the stone dyke which surrounded the hal-
lowed spot.
As Mass would be held just after midnight, Allister, by
making a detour, would avoid passing his own house and
could reach the church under cover of darkness. Rab felt a
premonition of evil. He was full of gloomy forebodings and
tried to dissuade his master from crossing to Rannoch.
"Best bide whar ye are," said Rab, "couthy and comfort-
able."
"Rab, laddie," said Allister, laying his hand on his shoulder
and gazing out of the small window which lighted the interior
of the sheiling, "I'm wae for my ain fireside an' I maun see
auld Father Ian an' be shrived, for my sins lie heavy on my
soul. Nae man kens these times if he'll see another day dawn,
an' the sun come up o'er the bonnie hills. Rab, I'm gaen tae
the auld kirk nae matter what happens, in fair weather or
foul."
Rab sighed. "A willful man will hae his ain way," said
he. "If you're sae set on't, I'd better let Father Ian ken an'
Sandy Stewart o' Ballyoukan so that they can hae a gaird
round the kirkyard, for if the English sodgers thoucht ye were
in the kirk they'd try their best tae tak ye dead or alive."
Allister protested, "I winna hae ony o' my kinsmen dis-
turbed. They've risked enough already. Let those who won
hame bide hame. I'll tak my chance."
Rab answered never a word, but a little later beckoning
Donald, the shepherd, he stole out, and behind the shelter of
1921.] THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF 85
the peat stack gave him his instructions, and sent him off over
the hills with a message to the priest to be ready and to the
clansmen to assemble and guard the church.
Holy Saturday, the day of their departure from the sheil-
ing, broke cold and gray. Heavy, black clouds swept the top
of the snow-clad mountains. The wind moaned among the
scraggy firs as if held in restraint. Black Rab puckered his
forehead as he looked out at the dawning day and shook his
shaggy head gloomily. To him, weather-wise, it portended a
storm, and anyone who crossed the mountains in a storm, in
his mind, was fey.
All morning the clouds brooded over the mountains. Away
on the horizon towards the west there was a clear, pallid, cold
stretch of steely blue sky, which, as the day advanced, shone
with a cold intensity. Towards midday Rab wrapped his plaid
about him, armed himself, took his staff and some provisions,
and set out to cross the mountains in advance, to reconnoitre
and to ensure the way was clear and all was safe for his chief.
An hour later, Allister, likewise heavily armed, set out in his
wake.
As he crossed a shoulder of the mountain, snow began to
fall and the wind to rise, but secure in his knowledge of the
country, Allister laughed at the coming storm and plodded
on, following the trail of Black Rab. The wind swept down
the mountain side, obliterating the track; the sky grew blacker
and blacker and the snow thicker, so thick that Allister could
hardly see a yard in front of him. He stopped, drew his plaid
closer around him, pulled his cap down over his ears and
forehead, and then grasping firmly his staff, carefully felt his
way down the mountain. The storm increased in fury and,
from time to time, great gusts of wind almost swept him off
his feet. It grew so strong that he was compelled now and
then to stop, turn his back to the gale and brace himself to
meet its fury until he regained his breath. He lost all sense
of direction. It grew colder. His feet and hands were numb
and his eyes smarted so that he could hardly see. On he went
mechanically, the snow swirling about him. The white spirits
of the storm seemed to circle around him. They shrieked in
his ears; they buffeted him, lashed him and stung his cheeks
with their white claws. They peered into his face and, with
malicious glee, mocked him, dancing wildly before his weary
86 THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF [April,
eyes, while above the noise of the storm rose the skirl of the
bagpipes playing the war march of his clan. Allister stopped
and listened eagerly.
"The pipes will be playing by Athol," he muttered to him-
self. "It sounds like Red Lachlan an' Donald."
He moved forward again and tried to quicken his steps.
The skirl seemed to come from no given direction. It seemed
to encompass him, yet he could see no one. He shouted, but
his voice was lost in the roar of the storm. It was strange, he
thought, that they should be piping the war march.
"Hello Lachlan!" he cried, "Hello Donald! Hello!"
"By St. Bride," he shouted, "it is the war march. Maybe
the prince has landed and the king will come to his own
again." He smiled hopefully. "The piping comes frae the
clauchan. The English have been put to flight and they're
playing to let me know all is well. Hello Lachlan! Hello
Donald! Hello! I come."
He hurried forward, stumbling and reeling. On he strug-
gled against the storm, until a strong gust of wind struck him
and hurled him, breathless and exhausted, into a sheltered
hollow among the soft snow. The gale raged, but here it was
not so violent, and at least he could breathe. He wished it
were not so cold. The war march had died away and now,
riding on the storm, came the mournful wail of the "Lament."
Who was dead he wondered. He took off his cap, and his
brown hair, released from its ribbon, streamed in the wind.
Reverently he knelt, crossed himself, and prayed: "May their
souls rest in peace. Give them eternal rest, O Lord."
He lifted his head. A bright light seemed to shine around
him. He was in the church, kneeling close to the altar rail.
A strange priest, a priest he did not know, was saying the Mass.
His face was very beautiful, very gentle, his smile was tender
and his eyes full of unutterable love.
He noticed there was no acolyte there. He wondered.
Then, rising from his knees, he advanced to the altar to the
side of the priest and sang the responses and served as he
was wont to do when a boy.
"Dominum Vobiscum (The Lord be with you)."
"Et cum spiritu tuo (And with thy spirit) ."
The voice of the priest was very sweet. He was glad he
had come to Mass even though the way had been long and the
1921.] THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF
87
journey arduous. He felt all right now. He was not tired in
the least. He was no longer cold and felt quite warm and
comfortable. He received the Holy Sacrament from the priest
who smiled. It made him feel very happy.
"Ite; missa est (Depart; the Mass is finished)."
"Deo gratias (Thanks be to God)," he sang in response.
He sighed, and his head sank on his breast.
Next morning, the Sunday of Easter, broke fair and clear.
The storm had died away and all was peace. Black Rab and
a few of his clansmen, searching for their chief, found him half
buried in the snow, kneeling in a hollow with his face to a rock,
clasping his crucifix to his breast.
Reverently they bore him to a nearby sheiling. The news
spread like the fiery cross and there was sorrow throughout
Rannoch. In the middle of the night they carried him down
to the church. There wrapped in his plaid with his claymore
by his side and his crucifix on his breast, they laid him to rest,
by torchlight, before the altar; while from the hills around
came the long drawn wail of the pibroch.
The English sentry shivered and cursed as he paced up
and down in front of the house. The dark mountains looming
all around him, the loneliness of the place and the intense still-
ness of the night jarred on his nerves. He wished something
would happen, and jangled his accoutrements to give himself
a feeling of companionship, and longed for the warmth and
brightness of the kitchen fire and the company of his fellows.
Suddenly the mournful wail of the pipes broke forth and
echoed up the glen. He was startled. A strange eerie feeling
crept over him. His musket slipped from his grasp and
crashed to the ground. He bent and hurriedly groped for it,
and then, straightening himself, he peered out into the dark-
ness. There were lights in the church and the moving
shadows of many men, and from over the glen came the low
murmur of voices rising and falling like the lapping of the
tide. The sentry ran to the house and called the sergeant,
who growled out many oaths at being disturbed, swung his
cloak around him and stepped out into the night. For a few
moments they stood together in the shadow of the house,
gazing at the lights beyond. Then, after a hurried consult!
tion, they slipped quietly down, crossed the burn and climb
88 THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF [April,
the bank towards the church. Cautiously they crept up to the
dyke of the graveyard, raised their heads till their eyes Avere
on a level with the top and tried to obtain a view of what was
going on.
The interior of the church was filled with armed men
who knelt with bowed heads. A white haired old priest in a
black chasuble trimmed with orphreys of silver stood at the
foot of the altar steps at the head of a grave, while six stalwart
men, clad in weather-worn tartan, raised the bier on which
lay the body of their chief, ready to lower it to the crypt below.
As the bier was raised, the sergeant caught a glimpse of the
face of the dead.
"Hell!" he breathed in astonishment, "it's the Stewart
himself." Then, turning to the sentry, he told him to hurry
back to the house and report to the captain, and bring him
back with his men.
The captain was elated at the news brought him, for the
reward called for the body of Allister Stewart living or dead.
He got his men together and ordered them to cross quietly
and surround the church. As they closed in on the holy place,
the captain's scabbard rattled on a bowlder. He cursed softly
and waited. All seemed quiet, however, so he moved forward
again, holding high his scabbard. As he neared the dyke of
the graveyard, a figure rose silently out of the shadow and
drove a dirk deep into his breast. For a moment he swayed,
then when the dirk was withdrawn with a wrench, he fell with
a thud, dead.
Death rode through Rannoch that night. The House of
Baloan burned, so that no Saxon should again desecrate its
walls. The pipes wailed and screeched alternately, and when
morning broke there were no soldiers in the glen and none
had left it.
On the night of Easter every year is heard among the
mountains the wild war march, the sound of many supplica-
tions and the long drawn wail of a lament, a ghostly requiem
for the last of the Stewarts of Baloan.
ALBANIA.*
BY WALTER GEORGE SMITH.
JLBANIA is said to be the least known country of
Europe, although it is only thirty-nine miles
from Italy. The reader of Childe Harold will
recall Byron's description of its picturesque
scenery and its wild inhabitants as he saw them
during the reign of Ali Pasha in 1811. Its population varies in
accordance with the political boundaries that may be assigned
to it.
The author whose work is before us insists that the true
Albania has an area of about thirty thousand square miles
and a population variously estimated at about eighteen hun-
dred thousand people, though others place the number at two
and one-half to three millions. There are eight hundred thou-
sand Albanians living in Southern Italy, nine hundred thou-
sand in Greece, between eighty and one hundred thousand in
the United States, twenty-five to thirty thousand in Armenia,
and forty to fifty thousand in Turkey, with scattering repre-
sentatives elsewhere. The Albanians of Italy emigrated there
when the Turks conquered their country. They have kept
their social customs and their form of Christianity, recognizing
the Pope as their religious head, instead of the Patriarch of
Constantinople.
In Albania there are other races, notably the Serbians,
Bulgarians and Wallachians, to the number of three hundred
and fifty thousand in all. The country is very mountainous,
with many rivers, navigable, however, but a short distance
from the Adriatic into which they all flow. There are several
large lakes, notably Scutari, Ochrida, Presba, Malik and
Janina. The largest town is Scutari, with a population of
thirty-two thousand. The climate in the Southern portion is
as warm as Italy. It is generally healthful, though the heat
in summer is sometimes oppressive. It is believed by some
philologists that the Albanian language is that of the Pelas-
' Albania: The Master Key to the Near East. By Christo A. Dako. Boston: E. L.
Grimes Co. 1919.
00 ALBANIA [April,
gians. Until recently, it was thought that the Macedonians
and Epirotes were two tribes of the Greek people, but now it
is the belief of scholars that neither of these were Greeks, but
the forefathers of the Albanians.
Christianity was introduced on the Albanian coasts as
early as the first century. In the year 1054 when the Oriental
schism took place, the Albanians followed the Church of Con-
stantinople. But when the Turkish invasion followed, the
greater part of them became Moslems. At present two-thirds
of them are Moslems, and the remainder are divided between
the Greek and the Catholic Church. Many illustrations are
given to show that the Greeks derived their deities from the
Pelasgians, and that the Greek mythology was not of Greek,
but of Pelasgian origin. The Pelasgians occupied the Balkan
Peninsula, and were divided into several tribes. Those form-
ing the Kingdom of Illyria gave much trouble to the Romans,
but were finally subdued. After the invasion of the Slavs
or Bulgarians, the Albanians became included within their
present territory. The Turks made their advance upon them
in 1318 and finally conquered the country, though there
was a brilliant interval of independence won by their great
national hero, George Kastriota, more commonly known under
the name of Scanderbeg.
It was not until 1571, however, that the last fortresses of
Albania fell and the Turkish power was thoroughly estab-
lished. For some years in the latter part of the eighteenth
century and the beginning of the nineteenth, upper Albania
was an almost independent sovereignty, and in the south
Ali Pasha reigned until 1822. After the Treaty of Berlin,
July 13, 1878, the Albanians formed the Albanian League and
endeavored to prevent the partition of a large part of their
country. This League was suppressed by the Turks in 1880.
When the Young Turks came into power in 1908 they had the
assistance of the Albanians, who believed that national equal-
ity and freedom would be granted them. But, as they were
disappointed, they revolted and forced their demands. Their
success aroused the jealousy of the other Balkan Powers, and
soon after Serbia occupied the northern part of Albania, and
Greece, the southern.
The independence of the country was proclaimed on No-
vember 28, 1912, and at the London Ambassadorial Confer-
1921.] ALBANIA
91
ence held on December 20, 1912, Albania's autonomy was
agreed to in principle, and its frontiers roughly outlined.
The throne of the new kingdom was offered to Prince William
of Wied, who arrived at Durazzo on March 7, 1914.
The government of Albania was vested in the hands of
the Prince under the title of the Mbret, supported and ad-
vised by an international commission of control as agreed
upon by the Ambassadorial Conference of July, 1913. Shortly
after the outbreak of the European War, the Prince left
Albania, and issued a proclamation acknowledging that the
sovereign powers had been transferred to the international
commission of control. The commission, as a result of the
War, has separated and retired, but, according to our author,
it is still the legal sovereign power in Albania. The validity
of the decision of the London Conference attested by Austrian
proclamation and the formal statement of Baron Sonnino,
established the integrity and independence of Albania. Since
1914 Albania has been invaded three times by the Serbians,
twice by the Greeks and by the Austrians. At present the
entire territory is occupied by Italian and French troops, prin-
cipally Italian, but it is declared that they are there only for
military, and not political, purposes.
The Albanians are said to be the most beautiful race
among the peoples of the Balkan peninsula. They are gener-
ally of middle stature, very muscular, with small features, fair
complexion, with hazel or blue eyes. They have always been
warlike from the time when they were soldiers of Pyrrhus and
Alexander the Great. Their kilt, which until the Greek revo-
lution was looked upon with contempt, has become the tra-
ditional national dress of the Greeks, as well as their own.
The testimony of Byron, written after his visits in 1811, is
aptly quoted as showing the characteristics of these people.
He says:
Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack
Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.
Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
Who can so well the toil of war endure?
Their native fastnesses not more secure;
Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
Their wrath, how deadly! but their friendship sure.
92 ALBANIA [April,
When gratitude or valor bids them bleed,
Unshaken, rushing on where'er their chief may lead. 2
The Albanians are sensitive with a great feeling of per-
sonal dignity and national pride. They are not only an Aryan
people, but European in their national instincts. They marry
only in their own rank. Christians and Moslems alike are
monogamists. Women are treated with great consideration.
Although they are spoken of as lawless, it is said that there is
no other people in Europe so much under the tyranny of law.
Their habits, customs and laws, especially in Northern Al-
bania, are explained by the canon of Lek, said to have been
framed by Lek Dukghini. It is said that the teaching of
Christianity and of Islam, all must yield to the canon of Lek,
which comes down from the fifteenth century. It is an un-
written law, demonstrated by a council of leaders known as
the Malesori. A full council consists of Bairaktars (banner
bearers), four leaders and twelve learned in law and twelve
heads of houses. The council meets in the open air near the
church or mosque.
All cases come before the banner bearer, who decides the
number of conjurors before whom the accused may swear his
innocence and who are willing to swear to it with him. The
plaintiff has the right to nominate the conjurors, then, when
all have met before the council, plaintiff and defendant are
heard. Should the conjurors agree that the accused is inno-
cent, he is acquitted by the elders. If all but one agree, that
one can be dismissed, but two must take his place. The
plaintiff has a right to demand more conjurors up to a fixed
number, according to the crime: Twenty-four may be de-
manded for murder; from two to ten for stealing, according to
the value of the thing stolen. If a conviction ensue, the elders
decide the punishments. Under the canon of Lek there are
but two punishments, fine and burning of property. Neither
death nor imprisonment can be inflicted, and when acquittal
follows, the party adjourn to church, candles are lighted on
the altar and, in the presence of the priest, the accused swears
his innocence on the Gospel.
The Vendetta prevails in Northern Albania, where blood
vengeance follows an injury to honor. The Albanians are hos-
Childe Harold, Canto 2, Ixv.
1921.] ALBANIA 93
pitable to such a point as to make the person of the guest
sacred to the host. An injury to a friend can hardly be ex-
piated save by death. The Albanians are skilled in the me-
chanical arts, and in the work of the loom. Agriculture does
not flourish. Cattle, sheep, horses and goats are successfully
raised. Both men and women join in the dance which has
come down from antiquity, known as the Pyrrhic.
Albania, having been for many years a part of the Turk-
ish Empire, has shared the general condition of all peoples
of the Empire in lacking any modern school system. The
Christian Albanians have been under the supervision of the
Patriarch of the Greek Church. It should be noted that the
term, "Greek Church," does not imply that the Greeks pre-
dominate in its membership. It is said that of them there ire
66,000,000 members, of whom 59,000,000 are Slavonians, and
pray in the Slavonic tongue. Several millions are Rumanians,
but they are all under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch, and
the Church organization is controlled by the Greeks. The
great ambition of the Greeks is for the restoration of the By-
zantine Empire, and thus the Greek Church in the Balkan
peninsula has been a serious obstacle to the national progress
of all the Balkan nationalities. The power of the Greek Pa-
triarch has come down from the time of Mohammed II., called
the Conqueror. After he had captured Constantinople, he
recognized the Greek Patriarch, not only as the head of the
Greeks, but of the Armenians, the Serbians, the Bulgarians
and the Albanians, and gave him special privileges. The
jealousies that ensued finally resulted in an independent Bul-
garian Church. Greek Orthodoxy is exceedingly strict, and,
needless to say, wields great power.
The Albanians can hardly be said to have a literature.
In ancient times they are believed to have made use of the
Phoenician alphabet. It was later borrowed by the Greeks.
In 1626 they began to write their own language, but it was not
until quite recently that a serious effort was made to bring
about the use of the national literary language, and a system
of modern education. Committees were formed by Albanians
living in foreign countries, and books and periodicals were
published in Albania and sent into the country through the
mails. A girls' school was established in 1891 in Kortcha
by a graduate of the Constantinople College for Girls, which
94 ALBANIA [April,
has been maintained through many vicissitudes to the present
day. In December, 1908, a congress was held at Monastir,
attended by learned Albanians representing Moslems, Cath-
olics, Orthodox and Protestants, and by a unanimous vote
recommended the use of the Albanian language throughout
the country.
When the Young Turks came into power a great national
revival took place throughout the country. Clubs, day and
night schools, literary and musical societies were formed, and
newspapers issued. But in the year following, the Turkish
Government sent troops to suppress these movements. There
was severe fighting and much devastation and many atrocities.
The Albanian mountaineers were driven into Montenegro, but
in 1911 the Young Turks yielded temporarily. In 1912, fighting
began again, but the Committee of Union and Progress of the
Young Turks, seeing its proximity to defeat, yielded to the
Albanian demands. Under the auspices of Russia, the Balkan
League was then formed, followed by war with Turkey by all
the Balkan Powers. Montenegro was the first State to declare
war against Turkey, and it was initiated by an invasion of
Albania. The Albanians claimed the protection of the great
Powers. Finally, their country was taken over by a Commis-
sion representing the five great Powers, and the Montenegrin
troops withdrew. It would be very tedious to follow the details
of the military movements since 1912, and the various efforts
to secure the settlement of the country.
On December 20, 1912, as has been already stated, Europe
recognized the independence of the country, which had been
proclaimed by the Albanians themselves, on the twenty-eighth
of November of the same year. The reason for the great
importance of the Albanian question arises from the intense
national consciousness of the people, which leads them to
resist desperately the claims of the Greeks to the south of their
country and of the Serbians and Montenegrins to the north.
Speaking in the House of Commons on September 28, 1915,
Lord Grey, who was then Foreign Minister, declared: "Our
policy has been to secure agreement between the Balkan
States, which would insure to each of them not only independ-
ence, but a brilliant future based as a general principle on the
territorial and political union of kindred nationalities. . . .
the policy of the Allies is to further the national aspirations
ALBANIA gg
of the Balkan States without sacrificing the independence of
any of them." 3
The difficulty in obtaining this just end lies in the national
jealousies and imperialistic tendencies of the Balkan nations
and of Italy. An agreement was made between Italy and
Greece for the partition of Albania, which aroused the wrath
of the Albanians throughout the world. It is unfortunate for
the peace of the country that its geographical situation is of
such great importance from a strategic point of view. It seems
no exaggeration to use the term adopted by our author in
speaking of it as "the key of the Near East." Whatever Power
is in possession of its harbors especially and the stronghold of
Avlona, practically commands the Adriatic Sea. The Italians
cannot forego the idea that this harbor should be entirely in
their possession, while the northern thrust of Greece seeks
Albanian territory to add to those portions of Macedonia
already in her grasp. The natural short route by land to Con-
stantinople and the Black Sea countries and thus to Asia, is
through Italy, across the Adriatic Sea and through Albanian
territory to Salonika.
The Balkan peoples, and the Greeks themselves, are still
very primitive. They carry on war with a ferocity shocking to
the modern conscience. Were it not for their marvelous re-
cuperative power, it would seem impossible that these peoples
could preserve any hope or give prospect of a future civiliza-
tion. The story of the Turkish invasions with their massacres
and devastations, are paralleled by those of the Greeks. Not-
withstanding the guarantee of the independence of Albania,
when the Greeks invaded the country in 1914 and the country
was left to its fate, the outrages were only less systematic than
those in Armenia in the following year when the Turks sought
to exterminate that race. At the present time the country
seems to be quiescent. It behooves the League of Nations, for
its own safety, to reach definite and equitable adjustments of
the boundary questions and then to guarantee their perma-
nency by force of arms, not alone in the Balkan States, but for
Armenia and the remnants of the Turkish Empire as well.
In September of 1920, there was held at Aix-les-Bains a
meeting between Giolitti, the Italian Premier, and Millerand, 4
3 Quarterly Review, October, 1917, p. 353.
4 Boston Transcript, September 15, 1920.
96 ALBANIA [April,
the then French Premier. A decision was reached to
accept Albanian independence according to the frontiers of
1913, as Italy has done. It is supposed that requests have been
made to Serbia and Greece to stop their troops entering
Albania. The question of the boundaries has been fixed by the
rival national claims of Austria, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia,
Bulgaria and Greece. Montenegro sought the capital of the
country, Scutari. The Serbians and Bulgarians made large
demands, while each of the other countries made the situation
almost hopeless of settlement. The author presents the
grounds advanced for the various claims which are partly his-
torical and partly ethnological.
The decision arrived at was most unsatisfactory to the
Albanians, many of whom found themselves under foreign do-
minion. In consequence of their protests, the question was
left open and a commission sent by the Powers to delimit the
frontiers. This commission was asked to draw a boundary,
not on the basis of investigation and study, but of a compro-
mise. We may quote the comment of an author upon this
settlement : "From the cynical way in which large populations
of Albanians are ignored and handed over to their hereditary
enemies, it is obvious that the great Powers are not over
anxious to found an Albanian principality, which could have
a reasonable chance of success. . . "
The matter was not settled when the War of 1914 broke
out. The report that the boundary of 1913, recommended by
the Ambassadorial Conference in London, is to be enforced
is not encouraging to the friends of a strong Albania. Mean-
time, tribute should be paid to what the Italians have accom-
plished during their military occupation. Making Avlona
their base, they have introduced many excellent sanitary im-
provements, have opened hospitals, regulated the courts and
brought peace and order wherever their jurisdiction extends.
They have constructed a road eighty miles in length along
the Adriatic, they have caused schools to be opened and, in
the opinion of a competent American soldier, are entitled to
a high degree of credit. 5
It will be remembered that the great World War was pre-
cipitated by the Balkan question. Our own country seems
8 General George P. Scriven, 43 American Bar Association Representative, 1918,
p. 278.
1921.] CHIVALRY 97
very remote from these scenes of violence and barbarism and
the primitive passions of mankind, but we were irresistibly
drawn into the conflict, and what has happened in the past is
likely enough to happen in the future, unless the wisdom and
conscience of civilization find a means to enforce real justice
and a reasonable right of self-determination. Out of the
jealousies of politics and trade, it seems somewhat over-san-
guine to hope that a new era of international justice may
emerge, but the only salvation for our civilization depends
upon its coming.
The mission of our own country with its great wealth, its
great intelligence and its remoteness from special interest,
should be, not one of selfish isolation but of general help
nationally to these peoples. It may well be hoped that this
spirit will come to our Government, responding to the senti-
ments of Christian charity that has poured forth its millions
in private benevolence to the sufferers of the Great War.
CHIVALRY.
BY ELEANOR C. SHALLCROSS.
THE starry quests and the high ideals
Still shine above in the changeless blue,
But they of the singing hearts who climb
With lifted eyes are few.
For the matter-of-fact and the commonplace
And the worthless things that our souls delight,
Have tarnished the glory of high romance
And broken the armor of olden knight.
But still there are fighting hearts that pass
Through the drab realities unafraid
That go in velvet, with jeweled sword,
Up the golden road of the first crusade!
VOL. CS.UI. 7
A MEMORABLE EASTER.
BY F. JOS. KELLY, MUS.D.
ERHAPS the earliest account of the observance
of Easter that has come down to us, is that which
took place in the Basilica at Milan in 385 A. D.
It was in the time of St. Ambrose, who was Bishop
of that city. When we think of this glorious
feast, we associate with it elaborate music, a splendid ritual,
and decorations of Easter lilies. This Milanese Easter was
also important in these particular regards, and, moreover, for
the first time, we have a record of what is called "antiphonal
singing." St. Ambrose himself, in a letter to his sister, Marcel-
lina, gives us the particulars of this historical Easter, its cele-
bration and the exceedingly strenuous circumstances under
which it was celebrated.
Just at the time of St. Ambrose, the Roman Empire was
beginning to break up, to show signs of its fall and decay.
The Church, so long persecuted by pagan Rome, was able to
begin to assert itself, and to come out in the open after its
long exile in the Catacombs. It had recently been freed by the
edicts of Constantine, and was enjoying comparative peace in
spreading the message given to it by its Divine Founder. Al-
though freed from enemies from without, she now had to turn
her attention to the more insidious enemies from within. The
Arians, a sect that had attacked one of the fundamental doc-
trines of Christianity, having obtained imperial favor, de-
manded that certain churches be given to them for their use
alone, and one of these was the church of St. Ambrose, known
as the Basilica of Milan, his Cathedral Church.
St. Ambrose had been Bishop of Milan since the year 374.
Shortly before Easter in the year 385, the Arians made a
formal demand upon Ambrose for his Cathedral to be used
by them for the celebration of the feast of Easter. St. Ambrose,
the fearless champion of the right, promptly spurned their
demand, and defied all the power that they could bring to
bear to enforce compliance. The Arians, incensed by his
refusal, and encouraged by the imperial power, requested him
1921.] A MEMORABLE EASTER 99
to leave Milan. Braving the imperial power, St. Ambrose abso-
lutely refused to leave his see city. This was a very bold
stand for him to take, and he realized it, but at the same time
he realized his duty, his sacred duty as shepherd of his people,
to refuse the use of the churches of the True Faith to heretics,
and to prevent such use with his very life if necessary.
What means this holy Bishop took to carry out his threat
we shall presently see. The solemn services of Palm Sunday
were celebrated by him in the Basilica. His people, realizing
the great danger that threatened their beloved Bishop, would
not permit him to leave the church after the services. The
faithful themselves remained in the Basilica, determined to
hold it against all intruders at all costs. They barricaded the
entrances, and spent the night in the body of the church or in
the cloisters of the monastery attached to it.
On the morning of the glorious feast of Easter, officers
from the Emperor's court came to demand admission and to
take possession of the Basilica. When they found that all
entrances were barricaded, they realized the determination
of the people, and did not try to force entrance because of
the fear of loss of life. Instead, they, with their soldiers, sur-
rounded the Cathedral, hoping thus to terrorize the people
who were holding out against them, and to starve them out.
They hoped that the people would finally leave the Basilica
and disperse. But their expectations were not realized. On
the contrary, the people were more determined to hold to their
resolve not to allow their Basilica to be violated by heretics,
even with imperial sanction. Days passed into a week and yet
the people continued their voluntary imprisonment.
St. Ambrose himself gives us an account as to what took
place during this, the holiest of all weeks. He celebrated Mass
each day for the people, and the rest of the day was occupied
in various offices. But he writes that the night watches were
most trying. He finally conceived the plan of teaching the
people some hymns of his own composition, which had never
been sung before. The people most willingly entered into this
holy work. The soldiers surrounding the Basilica heard these
sounds, which seemed so strange to their ears. The melodies
and chants were in an unknown rhythm, and they seemed
never to come to an end. They grew suspicious. Never before
had they heard such singing. The soldiers believed that Am-
100 A MEMORABLE EASTER [April,
brose knew the secrets of the old superstition and used magic
incantations to rally the people around him. From a suspicion
this became a conviction.
St. Ambrose wrote a large number of hymns, and it is not
improbable that, after many long hours with every one wearied
with little sleep, the people who spent that Holy Week in the
Basilica of Milan, would sing with emotion at the break of
day the hymn beginning:
Aurora currus prsehit
Aurora totus prodeat.
The complete hymn translated by the poet, Dryden, being as
follows :
As the glad hours thus slide away,
Let Modesty begin the day,
And Faith be the meridian light
Unmixt with shades of doubtful night.
The morning lights their beams display,
May God so rise in us today;
In God the Father and the Son,
And He in Him entirely one.
The hymn beginning "The eternal gifts of Christ, the
King," most likely was sung on this occasion. The great St.
Ambrose wrote not long afterwards, that the people were very
much edified by learning and singing hymns during those
eventful days. We may quote his own words: "There is a
lofty strain and there is nothing more powerful than it. For
what has more power than the confession of the Trinity, which
is daily celebrated by the mouth of the whole people? All
eagerly vie with the other in confessing the faith and know
how to praise in verse the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So
they have all become teachers who could scarcely become
disciples."
It was during this self-imprisonment that St. Ambrose
also taught the people what is known as "antiphonal singing."
He himself says little of this, but we learn from his contem-
poraries that this kind of singing was contemplated by St.
Ambrose some little time previously, but never formally in-
1921.] A MEMORABLE EASTER 101
stituted until the necessity arose at these strenuous times in
the Basilica of Milan. St. Ambrose had learned this method of
singing, known as "antiphonal singing" from the Oriental
Church. Here the psalms were chanted by separate choirs of
men and women, who answered one another in alternate
verses, and it was this music that particularly impressed the
soldiers on guard outside the Basilica. They heard it echoing
in the distance, not knowing how it was produced.
Thus while Ambrose and his people were celebrating the
feast of Easter with many new ideas as to church music, the
soldiers remained on guard outside the Basilica. The great
feast passed, and still no attempt was made to take the Basilica
from its faithful guardians. This condition could not continue
indefinitely, so finally the Emperor proposed a compromise.
The story of the result of the compromise need not be
told here, but the outcome was a complete victory for St.
Ambrose and the Church he represented. He was allowed to
carry on his work without further molestation or hindrance.
The suspense was over, and to celebrate the event he conse-
crated the Basilica that had been the little field of his memor-
able Easter-tide, the scene of a historic struggle. The Easter
service of the year 385, the first of which we have any definite
knowledge, was alike memorable in its importance, as showing
the beginning of many valuable features of church music,
chief among which is the style of singing now in vogue the
world over, known as "Antiphonal Singing."
flew Books*
CATHOLIC THOUGHT AND THINKERS. Introductory by C. C.
Martindale, S.., M.A. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.75.
The series, to which this is the introduction, to be known by
the name at the head of this notice, is intended to exhibit to the
world, by means of selected biographies, the intellectual
contribution of the Catholic Church to the general sum of knowl-
edge. Saints we shall find amongst these lives; sinners also, at
least writers of the Tertullian type; churchmen and laymen. A
goodly company can be collected, and we look forward to the
forthcoming volumes with a pleasure only marred by the reflec-
tion that, of the two editors of the series named in the publisher's
preface, one has joined we may humbly hope the company of
those saints whose biographies he was to have helped to give us.
The late Father O'Dowd was a man of great promise, as well as
fulfillment; "compressus in breve, explevit tempora multa." His
death is a great loss to the Church in England and to this series.
To the pen of the surviving editor is due the book we are con-
sidering. Few could have essayed the task of condensing so
much knowledge into some hundred and fifty pages and pre-
senting it, though condensed, in such bright and readable form.
For the object of this introduction is not so much to indicate who
were the great luminaries of Catholic literature since the founda-
tion of the Church nor what was their contribution to that liter-
ature, but rather what manner of a world it was in which they
lived and wrote, and what was the particular form of difficulty
with which each age had to contend, whether, as at first, Gnosti-
cism in one of the numerous forms under which then, and since,
it has crossed the path of the Faith, or Arianism, or the conflict
between East and West, Humanism, the Reformation, Modernism.
These are but a few of the matters dealt with, and though they
can, within the compass mentioned, be but cursorily considered,
each is tellingly exhibited to us by some epigrammatic phrase.
We must not omit to notice the manner in which modern aspects
of old questions and institutions are handled. "In the reversal of
so many verdicts upon history, which today we witness, nothing
is more remarkable than the transference, increasingly felt as
due, of the name Renaissance from the fifteenth to the thirteenth
century. The thirteenth was the true creative period; the fif-
teenth, imitative largely." It is good to learn that such excellent
1921.] NEW BOOKS 103
doctrine is gaining ground in spite of the opposition which it
meets with from those who cannot believe that anything of good
can emerge from what they would still love to call, if they dared,
the Dark Ages.
Or again, let us select for praise the brief, but admirable,
summary of the Church of England as by Law Established as she
now is; the change which has come over her; the strange bed-
fellows which lie down within her hospitable walls; the influences
which are, and those which have been, concerned in her develop-
ments; all of which things are indicated in a few pages but with
perfect completeness and lucidity.
We should like to commend the enterprise of the publishers in
securing the skillful pencil of Mr. Paul Woodroofe as designer of
the embellishments. Those who know his work will not be disap-
pointed; a beautiful, as well as valuable, book has been the result.
Why such a book, packed with names and facts was ever allowed
to appear without an index is a mystery. An index such a book
must have, and it is rather hard on its readers to expect each one
to make his own. One last grumble the price is lamentably
high and must militate against that very extensive sale which we
desire for a volume so opportune and so useful.
THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD WAR. By John Bach
McMaster. Vol. I., 1914-1918; Vol. II., 1918-1920. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. $3.00.
The distinguished author of A History of the People of the
United States, and professor of American History in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, has now completed his study of the World
War in a second volume, bringing the narrative down to 1920.
The earlier volume, published in 1919, covers the period from the
declaration of war by Germany in 1914 down to the "international
peace debate" in the spring of 1918. It deals with those particular
aspects of the great conflict which were influential in bringing the
United States to its ultimate decision to join with the Allies
against Germany. The author passes in review questions of pro-
German propaganda in the United States, the restrictions placed
upon neutral American trade, the sinking of American ships on
the high seas, the circumstances attending the declaration of war
against Germany, and the concentration of American resources
for the effective prosecution of the War. Volume II. deals with
the civilian war work at home and the military operations of the
American Army abroad, with the several "peace offensives," th
conclusion of the armistice, the deliberations of the Peace '
ference, the Treaty of Peace, and the final rejection of the Treaty
104 NEW BOOKS [April,
by the Senate. Among the appendices to the volume are the text
of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Senate resolution
containing the reservations demanded as the condition of ratifica-
tion of the Treaty.
Professor McMaster's method of presenting his subject differs
from that of the ordinary historian in that, instead of merely
tabulating events in their chronological succession, he seeks to put
the reader in the presence of the situations described by a judi-
cious selection of documentary material, presented in the form of
quotations woven into the narrative of the text. The result is
a history which is less suitable as a reference-book for students,
but which will be read with far greater interest by the general
public, and to which students will turn, in order to catch the
spirit of the times and the cross-currents of public opinion. It
is the method followed with such success by the author in his
History of the People of the United States perhaps the most
graphic narrative of American life and politics that any historian
has produced. In the present volumes the hand of the trained
historian is seen in the elimination of what was transient and of
less importance, and in his studied impartiality in the handling
of evidence. His sympathies may lead him to express his con-
clusions in strong terms at times, but they do not prevent him
from presenting both sides of the case.
EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS. By Joseph Husslein,
S.J., Ph.D. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.75.
This forceful book is, perhaps, the most valuable treatise
that has come from the fertile pen of Father Husslein, and should
make a universal appeal. At the very outset attention is called to
the inevitable influence philosophy must have upon the thought
and, therefore, the life of the masses. The oftentimes baneful
influence of philosophy on life is then traced in the operations of
that philosophically unreasonable, scientifically inaccurate, and
morally debasing theory of Materialistic Evolution. The adher-
ents to this theory are, by their own words, condemned to a blind
faith in a creed that has no reasonable basis, no scientific justi-
fication, no moral sanction or restraint.
The author distinguishes clearly between the unwarranted
theory and the proven facts of Evolution. It is only as a complete
theory that Evolution can be of service to Materialism. But this is
merely a fictitious service, because the evolutions from inorganic
to organic matter, from merely organic life to conscious life, so
vitally necessary for a complete theory, are scientifically unten-
able. Able use is made of the statements of representative evo-
1921.] NEW BOOKS 105
lutionists. The scientifically established facts of evolution are
shown not only to be consonant with the creative act and prov-
idence of God, but actually to accord with the detailed narrative
of creation contained in Genesis.
The account of the origin, development and delimitation of
Evolutionism is concise and clear. Two short chapters deal with
the origin of the earth and of life. A number of chapters, treating
of the origin of man, are valuable both as a vindication of the
traditional view of the Church, and as a refutation of the theories
of Materialists and of the more or less silly proofs offered in favor
of these theories. The chapter, "The Fool Hath Said," is an able
and eloquent summary.
The book, though it contains a formidable array of facts and
sources, is written with such clearness, force and attractiveness,
that it will prove pleasant, as well as profitable, reading. Best of
all, it has a vital, timely message.
A STUDY OF WOMEN DELINQUENTS IN NEW YORK STATE.
By Mabel R. Fernald, Mary H. S. Hayes and Almena Dawley,
with a Statistical Chapter by Beardsley Ruml and a Preface
by Katherine Bement Davis. New York: The Century Co.
This book has many commendable features, above all it em-
phasizes the conservative position that it is not a question of
delinquency, but of individual delinquents that must be faced.
One of the greatest of human mysteries is the fact that no two
human beings have ever been exactly alike. Lincoln once said
that the Lord must have liked the common people, since He made
so many of them. He must certainly like individuality, since all
human beings are individual.
The conservative note is maintained in the book to the very
end. One of the conclusions is that "any search for a well
defined type of individual appearing as the delinquent woman
(italics from the book) will probably be fruitless." We have
heard so much about the criminal type and, indeed, that idea
so dominated criminal anthropology a few years ago that it is
interesting now to see how further study does away with it.
The authors are almost as emphatic in declaring that intel-
ligence, or the lack of it, must not be considered to be a prominent
factor in the production of criminality. They agree with Goring
that "Crime is only to a trifling extent (if to any) the product of
social inequalities, of adverse environment, or of other manifesta-
tions of what may comprehensively be termed the force of circum-
stances. . . . We disagree, however, in the preeminence attached
to such a constitutional factor as defective intelligence in contrast
106 NEW BOOKS [April,
with economic factors. The relationships which we have observed
have been, if anything, more slight in case of the measures of
intelligence than in that of the indices of social and economic
factors."
Neither environment nor heredity play an important role in
the production of the criminal. The criminal is just a question,
as Warden Osborne has often insisted, of ordinary people, quite
like all the rest of us on the average, going wrong. The reform
of the criminals consists in getting them to go right. Women
criminals are, in this respect, no different from the men. We miss,
in the study of the factors that influence criminality, in the volume,
many of which are very well worked up, the place of the divorced
family in the production of young criminals. It would seem as
though surely we have enough of data bearing on that subject
now, to enable us to draw some rather definite conclusions with
regard to it.
THE WAY OF ST. JAMES. By Georgiana Goddard King, M.A.
The Hispanic Society of America. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Three volumes. $9.00.
The Professor of the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College
has written a detailed and vivid account of the shrines and
churches that are met by the pilgrim on the way to the most
popular shrine of the Middle Ages, St. James of Compostela. Her
general aim, as outlined in a preliminary chapter, is to discover
and record the evidence of Spain's debt in architecture to other
countries, France in particular, during the Middle Ages. Her own
contribution to this study is first, a record and interpretation
of iconographic detail all along the way: second, an attempt to
date her finds by comparison with such dated examples as exist,
and third, an occasional hpothesis and the ground for it; e. g.,
on the original west front of Compostela, and the cult of Santiago.
Miss King is an excellent guide when she describes the archi-
tectural features of the churches she visited in her three years
pilgrimage, and an interesting companion when she tells us about
the ways and customs of the Spanish people today, or narrates
the legends and history of the mediaeval period. But she lacks
the one thing necessary to write sympathetically of a Catholic
people their faith. She cannot grasp the meaning of the Middle
Ages, for she is an outsider and an alien to all they represent.
When, too, Miss King ventures out of her province and dares
discuss Catholic doctrine or the history of religions, she writes
page after page of arrant nonsense. For example, she identifies
St. James with the Sol Invictus of Roman state worship, and for
1921.] NEW BOOKS
107
proof declares "that his feast is kept as near as could be managed
to the solstitial pause, and his authentic legend is crammed with
solar machinery."
This myth of the pagan origin of the cult of St. James is bor-
rowed as many other pseudo-facts from the pages of her
French rationalist authorities, but no proof has ever been given
of their extraordinary statements. Catholics do not necessarily
swallow whole every legend of the saints, as some non-Catholics
imagine. In the present case we are not bound to believe that
St. James founded an apostolic see in Spain, for we know as well
as any outsider that this legend is not mentioned until the ninth
century by Notker, a monk of St. Gall, and is rejected by many
Catholic scholars like Baronius, Natalis Alexander, Tillemont,
and others.
Why is it that a writer who can write so enthusiastically of
mediaeval Spanish art, should fail to grasp the doctrines that art
perpetuates in stone? It is the prejudice of the Protestant tradi-
tion, which still lives on, even after faith in Christianity has
totally disappeared.
THE MOTHER OF CHRIST, or The Blessed Virgin in Catholic
Tradition, Theology and Devotion. By O. R. Vassall-Phil-
lips, C.SS.R. New York: Benziger Brothers. $2.50.
Marian literature will be considerably enriched by this new
tribute of love and learning. It is a sensible and a scientific book,
for it consists not in a succession of apostrophes, but in a rational
appraisement of what devotion to Mary means, and what effect
it has had on the teaching of the Church and the practice of the
faithful throughout the centuries. The numerous quotations from
the Fathers, dating from almost Apostolic times, are most felic-
itous. To the Fathers, no praise of Mary seemed extravagant, and
yet they were most careful that no taint of pagan Mariolatry
pollute our pure love of her. The author has examined these quo-
tations most thoroughly, as he has examined the apocryphal
legends, and admits only such as have a real historical and dog-
matic foundation.
The book is a complete exposition of devotion to Mary from
many angles and points of view; it is, in short, an armory of
facts and tributes, of learning and piety, that embraces all which
can positively be said in favor of Mary's prerogatives and in her
honor. This book would seem to be no less a delight than a neces-
sity to priests. It contains material for countless sermons, and
is, at the same time, a safe guide in their exposition. It is written
especially for non-Catholic countries, where devotion to Mary is
108 NEW BOOKS [April,
exposed to so many prejudices and misinterpretations. Hence
the author has frequent cautions, and numerous refutations of
those objections raised by men who fear to detract from Jesus
by a too great love of His Mother. There is one dominant thought
impressed on the reader by this book that when we have such
solidly splendid material, we do not need to draw upon the
fanciful and the exaggerated to foster devotion to Mary.
THE CONNECTICUT WITS AND OTHER ESSAYS. By Henry A.
Beers. New Haven: Yale University Press. $2.25.
Professor Beers deserves the thanks of everyone who loves
essays which possess keen insight, exact and broad scholarship
and which at the same time are enriched by a quiet humor and
the unfailing charm of a delightful personality. The eleven essays
here presented would be hard to equal for ease and grace. Pro-
fessor Beers looks back upon long years of service at Yale and
equally long years devoted to the best things in literature. He is
one of the few living men who can look back upon the literary
lights that at one time made New England the cultural Mecca of
America, and touch hands with its Emersons and Thoreaus and
Lowells. Professor Beers is catholic in his tastes. He appreciates
what is good in Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and the other for-
gotten worthies of Connecticut, can love James Whitcomb Riley,
the Burns of the Middle West, knows his Thackeray as few men
know him, and at the same time finds a place for the brilliant
Sheridan, the fantastical Cowley, the lordly Milton, and the group
of dramatic stars that scintillated in Elizabethan sky. Professor
Beers has been an omnivorous reader, and his essays are marked
by frequent (and all too brief) excursions into alluring literary
by-paths from which the reader emerges enriched by an apt allu-
sion, an out-of-the-way bit of biographical information, or some
illuminating obiter dicta dropped quite en passant like an occa-
sional violet from arms overflowing with flowers.
SOCIAL SCANDINAVIA IN THE VIKING AGE. By Mary Wilhel-
mine Williams. New York: The Macmillan Co.
This book is a thorough and scholarly study of a race con-
cerning which most of us have had rather a superficial knowledge,
and is a most valuable work to any one interested in the subject.
Every possible aspect of the ancient Viking life is dealt with
under such headings as Classes of Society, Dress and Ornament,
Homesteads and Houses, Trade and Commerce, Government,
System of Justice, Social Gatherings, Language and Literature and
Religion.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 109
The date of the Teuton migration to Scandinavia is very
doubtful, and much disputed, but it is known that it took place
centuries before the birth of Christ. In that country they found
a dark race which came under their domination and adopted
their language and culture. The Vikings who evolved from these
primitive Teutons were tall, fair, large boned, muscular men who
were far more worthy of respect than the bloodthirsty pirates
they have been represented to be. Their ideal, of course, was the
warrior, for whom the highest bliss waited after death in the
halls of Valhalla; but they were men of great feeling, capable of
deep love, loyalty and devotion to their friends and their family.
Especially strong, even for a primitive nation, were the ties of
kindred; a man's best friend was one bound to him by ties of
blood and it was a saying among them that "unhappy is the man
who has no kindred." Their women had all the strength and
freedom of the North, and there was little difference in the mental
training of the sexes.
An interesting account is given of the runes, which were in-
scribed in the homes in the form of family history or invocations
to the gods on furniture and walls, or were used for conveying
practical information, messages often being sent carved in runic
characters on sticks.
With all their physical valor, their superstitions, cruelty and
uncouthness, the picture is made complete by a quotation from
their writings which formed the ethical code of the Vikings:
Chattels die; kinsmen pass away;
One dies oneself;
But good report never dies
From the man that gained it.
THE ELFIN ARTIST. By Alfred Noyes. New York: Frederick A.
Stokes Co. $2.00.
Like most poets, Mr. Noyes achieves his best work when
under no necessity of celebrating official or occasional matter.
So that his whimsical songs of "Peter Quince" and "The Silver
Crook" are likely to strike quick fire in readers frankly unable to
be thrilled by the curious theology of "As We Forgive" or the
somewhat ecstatic praise of the Mayflower's historic voyage.
Apropos of this latter poem and others in kindred spirit, the
latter-day reader cannot help demanding, why contemporary
English politicians seem so painfully intent upon slapping in the
face the fine idealism of contemporary English poets? But, per-
haps, the crime is not confined to any one age or any single
nation.
110 NEW BOOKS [April,
ESSAYS ON POETRY. By Rev. George O'Neill, S.J. Dublin:
The Talbot Press. 5 s. net.
Father O'Neill attempts the impossible by trying as so many
others have done before him to define the essence of poetry. His
definition : "Poetry is the language of passion and imagination ex-
pressing themselves under control of the laws of beauty," will,
without question, be sent to the Limbo of other definitions by the
critic who will find it both "treacherous and unsatisfactory."
Father O'Neill has some good sharp things to say about the
poetaster "who feigns passion where there is no real feeling, and
who merely echoes other people's words in deliberately contorted
prose." The versifier he dismisses with the adjective, "respect-
able," but rightly allows him no claim to the divine inflatus. "His
note and his function are to use the forms of poetry to achieve
some purpose which is not proper to poetry." Lowell's "Ode
Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865," is given
as a good type of "the imitation of poetry." It says much and
well; it suggests nothing. It is competent, graceful, elevated; but
it never grips, nor overpowers, nor even gives a new life to an
old thought, much less opens for us any sudden new window into
eternity." The mediocre poet is described well as "a mild and
tempered version of the poetaster." Longfellow is given as a type
of the mediocre poet, and "Hiawatha" is held up to scorn for "its
lack of originality, the tricks and monotony of its metre, and the
poverty of its ideas and images."
There are four brief appreciations of Aubrey de Vere, William
Allingham, Thomas Boyd, and Gerard Hopkins. The last essay
is undoubtedly the best, for it is at once highly appreciative and
sanely critical. Father O'Neill brings out the "rare masterly
beauties of his Jesuit confrere, but at the same time he proves
him guilty of "fantastic misuse of the English language."
SCIENTIFIC THEISM VERSUS MATERIALISM. By Arvid Reut-
erdahl. New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $6.00.
Even in recent years we have had our share of theories of
the Cosmos. It is not so many years ago that Bergson poetically
reduced everything to an eternal flux, and made our world a part
of the universal, flowing, palpitating jelly. Very recently came
Einstein with his Theory of Relativity, in which he has all material
particles gliding through a warped Space-Time in a vicious circle
of endless relations. As a rule, the norm of common-sense philos-
ophy is applied to these new theories, and their faults are soon
discovered. Those who adhere more or less closely to the Scholas-
tic elaboration of Aristotelian philosophy, are usually satisfied to
1921.] NEW BOOKS HI
use established verities for critical purposes, but it is seldom that
these verities are constructively employed in a complete sys-
tematization, which includes recently determined physical facts.
It is because Scientific Theism versus Materialism, the Space-Time
Potential, is more constructive than destructive that it should be
particularly welcomed.
The critical part of the book alone should give it a high rank
in theistic literature. Basing his proof on the facts of modern
science, the author mercilessly exposes the weaknesses of the
postulates of modern science. The ether is definitely disposed of
as a mathematical myth, and the theory of action at a distance
takes its place. The problems of a physical substratum and
physical action in general receive due consideration in the fourth
chapter, in which the author evolves his own Theory of Interde-
pendence. In the next chapter we have presented a model of the
Physical Universe. The author completes this chapter by relating
the physical system to the Transcendant Principle, the Absolute
Reality of God. In the following chapter is a critique of the New-
tonian Theory of Gravitation, which may well be considered
unique in the history of science.
To one who is a scientist, a mathematician, and a philosopher
this book should prove a revelation. To the average student,
often puzzled by weird materialistic schemes, to which he tries
in vain to present an adequate refutation, the critical part of the
book should prove a boon. The critique is timely, since it directs
itself against the latest manifestations of Materialism. The con-
structive portion of the book will prove a real contribution to cos-
mology, comprehensive, profound and satisfying.
CAIUS GRACCHUS. By Odin Gregory. New York: Boni & Live-
right.
We vote immortality to so many works of literature in the
hectic generosity of our day that it is almost a pause compelling
comment to declare an effusion simply "good*" This tragedy is
good, not great. It is done in meter and derives from the seven-
teenth century tragic poets of England. Mr. Gregory is so faith-
ful to his forebears, indeed, that he not infrequently breaks into
the rhyming couplet quite in the manner of Dryden.
The hero of the drama is a truly romantic figure, the younger
of the Gracchi, who put to the use of the plebeians, enthusiasm,
sympathy, idealism, and the noblest eloquence, save Cicero's, that
the Roman language ever knew. It must be confessed that Mr.
Gregory has not made him a commanding figure, but rather the
victim of proletarian indifference and aristocratic malice. It is
112 NEW BOOKS [April,
as if one were to picture Caesar not as the master of the world,
but in that sorry moment, when, betrayed and abandoned, he
wrapped himself in his mantle and sank in death at the feet of
Pompey's statue. The outstanding figure in the book is the wife
of Gracchus, Licinia, whose courage and beautiful devotion to the
virtues by which Rome lived are vividly portrayed. Most of the
other members of the dramatis persons are the typical figures of
Roman history: the stupid plebeians splitting their throats today
for some benefactor whom tomorrow they will spit upon; the
aristocrats, lustful in youth, brutal in age; the tremulous slaves,
the beautiful girls and the strutting officials with their susque-
pedalia verba.
Mr. Gregory's literary debts are not concealed, and one is
constantly conscious that he has saturated himself with the great-
est of tragedies on classic themes Shakespeare's Julius Cxsar.
In his final act (Scene I.), he has remembered the witch scenes
from Macbeth with good effect, while in Scene II., where Calpio
meets the citizen in whose rough sack is the head of the dead
Gracchus, we have the daring of Webster just saved by the reti-
cence of Mr. Gregory. The tragic irony of the situation is of all
time.
Caius Gracchus is carefully done after genuine research and
with a trained sense of dramatic possibilities. In diction and
meter it is admirable. By no stretch of the imagination can it
be called a work of unique poetic talent.
THE SHIP "TYRE;" A STUDY IN THE COMMERCE OF THE
BIBLE. By Wilfred H. Schoff. New York: Longmans, Green
&Co.
The title of this work is based upon the prophecy of Ezechiel
as recorded in the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters.
The ship itself is a symbol of Babylon, and the King of Tyre is
the ruler of Babylon. In these chapters are, however, symbolically
contained the misfortune visited upon all oppressors, whatever
their nationalities might be. The ship Tyre becomes the symbol
of world commerce, material wealth, and the pride of empire.
Her cargo is the symbol of the institutions of the priesthood and
the princedom of Juda, which Babylon had profaned.
The articles mentioned in these commercial chapters of Eze-
chiel were known to the Israelites from pre-exitic times. The
allegorical meaning attached to them by the prophet was easily
understood by them. The list suggested to the Israelites the
tabernacle, the temple, the palace. The symbolism imparted to
them was the lesson of the inviolability of sacred institutions.
1921.] NEW BOOKS
113
This same method of symbolical language is employed by St. John
in his Apocalypse. The articles of trade mentioned by the Apostle
are taken from the Old Testament, many from the prophecy of
Ezechiel. Babylon the great, against which John's wrath and
malediction are hurled, is Imperial Rome. The list of objects
of trade constituted the commerce of the Roman Empire, but
they refer, in the mind of the author, to the adornments of the
tabernacle and the temple. As direct language was inadvisable,
the symbolical forms of speech replaced it.
In this work the reader will find a close and detailed study
of the ships used in the time of Israel's captivity. The articles of
commerce mentioned by Ezechiel are described as to their value,
meaning and source. The numerous illustrations are well chosen
and helpful in the study of the commercial chapters of Ezechiel.
SUCCESS IN A NEW ERA. By James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.
Hoboken: Franklin- Webb Co.
This little hand-volume of practical philosophy will make a
valuable addition to the libraries of work-a-day men and women,
anxious to live up to their best, and to increase the capacity of
that best if possible. As its title indicates, it is a discussion of
just these problems, as they are conditioned by our own peculiar
modern time with its hurry, its oftentimes misplaced ambition,
and its toll of all-too-frequent broken-down constitutions and
shattered nervous systems. Dr. Walsh deals with the questions
of maintaining personal morals, strengthening will power, re-
creating body and mind, and developing concentration, with his
usual concreteness and trenchant common sense. As one would
expect, it is an optimistic, bracing and helpful book, As one
would expect, also, it contains a final, peculiarly Catholic chapter,
calculated, perhaps, to remove a possible superficial impression
that Dr. Walsh's choice of subject aligns him with the usual,
more or less, fatuous Materialists of the modern "success" school.
HISTORIC STRUGGLES FOR THE FAITH. By John Gabriel
Rowe. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co. $1.30 net.
The union of scholarliness and simplicity in these studies
makes them singularly attractive reading. Presenting in each
separate essay an interpretation of some crisis in the history of
the Faith in England and Ireland, the author clears up a great
many dubious and misty popular conceptions, and presents at
the same time enough fresh, interesting material, culled largely
from non-Catholic sources, to revivify the Catholic reader's im-
pression of the significance and splendor of the great martyrs.
VOL. cxm. 8
114 NEW BOOKS [April,
With the exception of one paper on the Truce of God, the volume
deals with the period between the first disestablishment of the
monasteries, under Henry, and the martyrdom of the Blessed
Oliver Plunkett, as a result of the nefarious Gates plot under
Charles II. Space is devoted to the Pilgrimage of Grace, in which
Robert Aske was a central figure, to the Catholic uprisings under
Edward VI., for their distinguished parts in which Humphrey,
Arundell and Robert and William Kett paid with their lives, the
martyrdom of Blessed Thomas Percy and Blessed Edmund Cam-
pion under Elizabeth, the part played by Father Luke Wadding
in the Irish Catholic Confederation, which lasted from 1641 to
1652, and which is curiously recalled by some features of Irish
contemporary history, and finally the stirring biography of Blessed
Oliver Plunkett.
CORRESPONDENCE OF JEAN-BAPTISTE CARRIER, DURING
HIS MISSION IN BRITTANY, 1793-1794. Collected, trans-
lated and annotated by E. H. Carrier, M.A. New York: John
Lane Co.
The only interest attaching to this volume is that it fur-
nishes the basis for a history of one of the abominable tribunes
of the French Revolution. Most of the letters published in this
collection deal with administrative details, the surveillance and
removal of suspected persons, the difficulties encountered by the
author in his revolutionary propaganda. A few describe his deal-
ings with refractory priests; one or two tell the joy he felt when
he met priests who submitted to his will. The letters, at least in
their English dress, have no literary merit whatsoever, and are
frequently bombastic to the verge of absurdity. Nor do they
throw any appreciable light on their author's brief but atrocious
career of criminality. The half-hearted attempt of Mr. E. H.
Carrier in his preface to whitewash the "Tiger of the West," falls
to the ground before the unanimous verdict of the most compe-
tent historians. Mr. Carrier admits himself that Taine, Mignet,
Thiers and Carlyle stigmatize the tribune as a monster. To these
condemnations we can add two others, no less damning. The
Cambridge Modern History (Vol. VIII., p. 356) states, that in the
noyades, organized by Carrier at Nantes, no less than one thou-
sand five hundred persons perished, and that during the four
months of his rule at least fifteen thousand persons suffered in
different fashions. Allard (Histoire des Persecutions, Vol. III., p.
149) finds a parallel to the atrocities of the Roman persecutors
against the martyrs in the deeds of Carrier. He says that Car-
rier assisted in person at the execution of four children, and when
1921.] NEW BOOKS 115
the executioner himself died of horror at the deed, Carrier coolly
replaced him by another. No critical or hyper-critical manipula-
tion of documents can wash away such indelible and shocking
stains.
THE CITY. By Paul Claudel. New Haven: Yale University Press.
The instability of social order, unless based upon something
more solid than whim or sentimentalism and personal desire, is
the theme of the drama. The city which turns against its political
leader, learns amid its own ruins that it can find a new birth and
stabilize law and order only when it bows before the wisdom of
the Crucified, and makes His precepts the keynote of its govern-
ment. Then only will men approach contentment, though at the
price of self-restraint, and come to know the meaning of loyalty
and unselfishness. In form, The City is a drama in three acts,
translated into vers libre so stiff and awkward as to make peni-
tential reading. M. Claudel's gift is lyric, not dramatic, and the
long and frequently obscure speeches would ruin any play before
the footlights. At times we come upon a sophomoric grandil-
oquence little less than painful. The poet, Coeuvre, asked to ex-
plain how "all things grow comprehensible through him," replies:
It is the breath that is supplied to me.
Dilating this void within me, I open wide my mouth,
And, having inhaled the air in this legacy of himself through which
man exhales each moment the image of his death,
I give back in its stead an intelligible word
And, having said it, I know what I have said.
In this last respect one may confess in all seriousness that
Coeuvre has the reader at a decided advantage. M. Claudel has an
admirable theme. Few American readers, however, will feel their
curiosity regarding his method of handling it potent enough to
carry them through to the end.
MY LIFE AND FRIENDS. By James Sully. London: T. Fisher
Unwin, Ltd. $5.00.
Autobiography, when supremely well done, has the bouquet
of a rare vintage. One can read over and over again the delicious
and idyllic pages of Edmund Gosse's Father and Son. But Pro-
fessor Sully, though possessing a clear and lucid style, is alto-
gether devoid of charm, of sentiment, of romance; of the true
artist's uncanny power of focusing commonplace events in the
mirage of memory and imagination. And so, straightforwardly,
and with as much soul as a chronicle or an index, he unfolds
tale of his years. His childhood and student days; his restless
116 NEW BOOKS [April,
years and his ripe maturity are all gone through with unimpeach-
able correctness in some two hundred and fifty pages.
The remaining eighty pages of the book give pen-pictures of
famous friends, among whom are George Eliot, Herbert Spencer,
Leslie Stephen, William James, George Meredith. Professor Sully
lacks completely the power of making these figures live. He jots
down a few desultory anecdotes about each, which do not at all
throw the personages into relief, and make little or no impression
on the mind. He reminds us in this connection of Locker-Lamp-
son, who in My Confidences has also attempted pen-portraits of
celebrities, and, by his own admission, failed in the attempt; for
Lampson, while possessing a pretty knack in verse, especially
vers de societe, had none of .the gifts of James Boswell. Professor
Sully's volume makes agreeable reading enough, but is devoid
of any special merit or interest.
A COMMENTARY ON THE NEW CODE OF CANON LAW. By
Rev. Charles Augustine, O.S.B. Vol. VI. Administrative
Law. St. Louis : B. Herder Book Co.
The sixth volume of Father Augustine's English commentary
of the new Code of Canon Law treats of sacred places and times,
divine worship, the teaching office of the Church, benefices and
other non-corporate ecclesiastical institutions, and the temporal
possessions of the Church. The reader will find many interesting
questions discussed in this volume: the dedication and consecra-
tion of churches, cremation and Christian burial, fasting and ab-
stinence, the use of sacred images and relics, the pastor's obliga-
tion of preaching, catechizing, and the giving of missions to non-
Catholics, the duty of Christian education, the rules of the Index,
the acquisition and administration of Church property and the
like. Father Augustine's treatise, the most complete we have in
English, is invaluable for its many references to past decisions, the
letters of the Popes and the writings of eminent canonists.
HOW WE ADVERTISED AMERICA. By George Creel. New
York: Harper & Brothers. $5.00 net.
Until we have read this remarkable review, we cannot appre-
ciate the great value of real propaganda work. It is simply amaz-
ing to learn the efforts of Creel and his many assistants to mold
and direct public opinion, not merely in the United States, but in
France, Switzerland, Holland, Spain, Scandinavia, Italy, Russia,
Mexico, the Orient and South America.
It is marvelous to learn of the details of this vast enterprise.
The Committee on Public Information made the world its class-
1921.] NEW BOOKS 117
room, and it taught all peoples the honesty of purpose and the
idealistic unselfishness of our great nation.
Mistakes? Of course, mistakes both of conception and execu-
tion were made. But no one can question the sincerity or the
courage of those men and women who backed up the sword with
the pen. The functioning of this force was vital and necessary.
It was a totally new instrument unknown before in our history.
That it was even brought into being is a credit of no mean
measure. That it accomplished so much, as this book shows, is
a tribute of high degree.
This volume is as necessary to a complete understanding of
our part in the World War as the record of any of the combat
divisions. Though supplementary, it was also necessary, and as
such, deserves a place high in the record of things accomplished
in the World War.
HISTORY OF AFRICA, SOUTH OF THE ZAMBESI, 1505-1795.
By Dr. George McCall Theal. Vol. I. (third edition). London:
Allen & Unwin.
Dr. Theal, archivist of Cape Colony, is known as an authority
on prehistoric Africa, its Bantu, Hottentot, and Bushmen tribes.
The volume at hand, the first of a monumental work which will
cover in detail the history of South Africa from the coming of the
Portuguese to the conquest of Cape Colony by the British, relates
in minute fashion the story of the Portuguese occupation. While
the title suggests a somewhat narrow appeal, there are several
chapters of interest to the student of the Columbian epoch and
numerous references to Catholic missionary activities, which will
delight the scholar in that field. There is an excellent intro-
ductory essay on Portugal in the fifteenth century, followed by
chapters dealing with the princely Henry, the Navigator, and the
explorations of Diogo Cam, Bartholomew Dias, Vasco da Gama,
and Pedro Cabral. Lengthy accounts are given of the discovery
of the Azores, the Congo, the African coast line, St. Helena, South
America, the rounding of Cape Good Hope, the establishment of
factories and garrisons, and the occupation of India. An espe-
cially interesting chapter deals with the failure of the Portuguese
and the coming of the rival nations, Holland, France and England.
The breadth of view is notable. The interpretation of the
Latin is highly favorable. There is a recognition of the powerful
religious, as well as commercial, motives which urged the ex-
plorers onward to find new lands to conquer and pagans to
convert. Outspoken is the defence of the Portuguese treatment
of the native races. Frequent are the notices of the expeditionary
118 NEW BOOKS [April,
chaplains, whose journals afford the bulk of the available infor-
mation, of the devotional earnestness of the hardy mariners, of
the labors of the Franciscan and Dominican friars in the settle-
ments, and of the martyr Jesuits in the interior among the can-
nibalistic savages.
THE LOYALIST. By James Francis Barrett. New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. $2.00.
Readers who followed this story along its course as a serial
in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, will find that its present form adds to
its merits. A continuous reading enables one to appreciate better
the rounded, satisfying picture the author has given of the social
and political life of Revolutionary Philadelphia. This accurate,
colorful, carefully woven background greatly enhances the value
of the novel as a bit of history, too often forgotten by the average
person, who is wont to think of Philadelphia only as the staid
birthplace of the Declaration. The excellent construction, also,
becomes more apparent when the book is taken as a whole; the
skillful adjusting of the proportions of fiction and fact; the judg-
ment with which personal and public interests are blended.
The Loyalist is not for one reading only; it is justly entitled
to a permanent place in every Catholic household. It is more than
entertaining, it is illuminating and solidly important. Moreover,
it is exceptionally timely, a forcible rejoinder to present-day anti-
Catholic propaganda of the sort exemplified in the attacks made
upon Irish Catholics in Mr. Owen Wister's biased and disin-
genuous book, A Straight Deal.
REPUTATIONS. By Douglas Goldring. New York: Thomas
Seltzer.
Mr. Goldring describes himself while speaking of another.
He says of James Elroy Flecker: "As a critic, Flecker was dis-
tinguished by a great capacity for enthusiastic appreciation a
quality far too rare and valuable to be despised. Almost any one
can pick holes in another's work: it requires a finer sensibility
to appreciate and reveal excellence."
One differs from Mr. Goldring when he calls Michael Fane a
"consummate prig." The quest after truth and reality bespeaks
power and imagination in the quester. Both are clearly visible
in Michael Fane. It is, on the other hand, very gratifying to
discover a critic with sufficient understanding to credit Gilbert
Cannan with evil moments rather than malice, to prophecy genius
in work which has thus far betrayed nothing further than clever-
ness. So much for Gilbert Cannan.
1921.] NEW BOOKS
119
It is impossible, in a short review, to dwell upon all of Mr.
Goldring's opinions, although they all repay investigation. They
are contemporary and unhampered by the mold of time. One
feels, moreover, a penetrating imagination at its play. Wrong-
doing is robbed of its charm by the explanation that virtue alone,
is true. Reputations is the sort of book which one keeps nearby
for ready reference.
KOSCIUSKO. By Monica Gardner. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. $1.75.
Miss Gardner's work is the first publication in English of a
biography of the Polish patriot to whom we of the United States
owe so much. It is an excellent bit of writing, short, but deeply
interesting, the author being endowed with a literary faculty that
enables her to unite conciseness with comprehensiveness. In the
light of this all-around study, we see Kosciusko's invaluable serv-
ice to the American cause as but one incident in a life of self-
devotion to the struggle for freedom. Side by side with the
records of his great public deeds are many intimate details of his
private life and character, displaying him as a vital, lovable per-
sonality.
The little book is a valuable contribution, instinct with its
English author's love and knowledge of Poland, her history and
literature.
SERMONS, by Rev. P. A. Canon Sheehan, D.D. Edited by M. J.
Phelan, S.J. (New York: Benziger Brothers. $3.00 net.) The
highest praise that can be given to a book of sermons is that they aim
first and last to send home the sacred truths of the Gospel to the hearts
of their hearers. As his friend, Father Phelan says: "Father Sheehan
never strains after effect or turns aside to pursue a flight of imagery
or a musical cadence." Indeed in one of these very sermons he
rebukes strongly the modern critic who listens to a sermon merely to
criticize. He writes: "The habit of hearing sermons makes us grad-
ually forget what sermons are, what they are intended to be, what
they are intended to do. ... We regard only such accessories to a
sermon, as he who preaches, or the language in which he preaches; we
forget altogether that it is the word of God, and that its only object is
our edification."
The sermons Canon Sheehan preached in his early years on the
English mission are in no sense remarkable, and form a marked con-
trast to the sermons preached in Ireland when he was among his own
people, and had gained a mastery of the English language through his
essay and novel writing. We doubt if any of the sermons of this col-
lection equal in eloquence those we remember reading in the pages of
The Intellectuals, The Blindness of Dr. Gray, or The Triumph of
Failure.
120 NEW BOOKS [April,
THE PATHS OF GOODNESS: Some Helpful Thoughts on Spiritual
Progress, by Rev. Edward F. Garesche, S.J. (New York: Benziger
Brothers. $1.50 net). Once more the Catholic reading public is in-
debted to Father Garesche for some helpful thoughts. The present
volume is up to his usual standard and compares favorably with the
volumes which have preceded it. Like them, it contains a number of
articles of some length and others exceedingly brief. Among the longer
articles, the mis-entitled "Little by Little," "Our Troublesome Selves,"
"The Much Required," and "Blind Spots" may be mentioned as the
best and most helpful.
A MAN WHO WAS A MAN: ST. JOSEPH, by Michael A. Kelly, G.S.Sp.,
S.T.L., Ph.D. (Gornwells Heights, Pa.: The Paraclete Publishing
Go. $1.50), is a painstaking study of St. Joseph, whom the author
designates "The Saint of the Commonplace." While the life of this
just and highly favored man of God is merely hinted at in the Sacred
Scriptures, Father Kelly has succeeded in drawing from it many con-
siderations that cannot fail to be helpful to the thoughtful reader. To
the text has been added a chapter giving in English the proper of the
Mass for the feast of St. Joseph, with his litany and the popular prayer
in his honor. The book is neatly and tastefully bound in dark blue
cloth with gold lettering.
THE COURSE OF EMPIRE, by Senator R. F. Pettigrew (New York:
Boni & Liveright), is positively refreshing reading. Senator Petti-
grew's speeches are the very antithesis of the average politician's utter-
ances. The Senator maintains that the State, just as much as the
individual, is bound by the laws of morality and honor. He lays down
that lust of territory and of wealth is no justification for conquest. He
holds that mighty bankers and corporations under cover of clever
iinancial juggling ought not to be permitted to fleece a whole people.
He shows up with documents and figures the futility and inherent dis-
honesty of many governmental shifts and subterfuges.
The style of these speeches is also noteworthy, being clear, forcible
and incisive. And from the treasure-house of a wide acquaintance
with literature and books, the Senator frequently illustrates and en-
forces his unusual opinions by deft and apt quotations.
THE BOY SCOUTS OF THE WOLF PATROL, by Brewer Corcoran
(Boston: The Page Co.). The Patrol is the foundation stone of the
Boy Scout Organization. Theoretically, the Scout Patrol, made up of
eight boys, is the boys' "gang" organized and directed. The boys of
the Wolf Patrol were a congenial unit a "happy family." They were
boys of the same neighborhood, and of the same age, banded together
under the able leadership of "Steve" Mayhew.
Brewer Corcoran has handed the boys of America a crackerjack
story of human interest, which gets its punch from the opening chapter.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 121
It is full of rippling fun and thrilling intensity, of real boy problems
during the War. The hike to the camp, the camp itself, and finally,
the naming of the camp, will delight the reader. The spirit of loyalty
and patriotism, of devotion and cheerfulness, together with the inspir-
ation given by proper leadership are brought out in a pleasing and
delightful manner. It is one of the best Boy Scout stories ever written.
OF the Catholic hymnals that have appeared in the last few years,
none will bear comparison with The St. Gregory Hymnal by
Nicola A. Montani (Philadelphia : The St. Gregory Guild) , either in the
character of the contents or the spirit and general tone of the hymns.
It is divided into an English and Latin section. The former contains
hymns for every season of the Church year, the principal feasts, hymns
to the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, one hun-
dred and fifty in all. The texts are from approved sources, and show
great care in selection. The melodies are devotional and truly Catholic
in origin.
The Latin section contains three hundred liturgical hymns, Motets,
Offertory pieces, Chants and several Gregorian Masses. Modern liturg-
ical music is included in this section, which covers every season of the
Ecclesiastical year, as well as hymns for Benediction, Forty Hours'
Devotion and Holy Week. A unique feature of this Hymnal is the
section devoted to Confirmation, Holy Communion, Ceremonies (Re-
ception, Profession, etc.). It is the most complete hymnal, meeting the
requirements of the Motu Proprio, that has so far appeared. Most of
the hymns are written so that they may be sung by one, two or four
voices.
VADE MECUM FOR NURSES AND SOCIAL WORKERS, by Rev.
Edward F. Garesche (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co.
$1.25), fills a long felt want of a pocket companion, to give to the busy
professional woman the spiritual comprehension and stimulus needed
to lift her difiicult and important mission into the realm of the super-
natural. The nurse meets souls at the psychological moment in her
service of sick bodies, and has a field for untold good in exemplifying
the "charity of Christ," as well as the perfection of nursing technique.
To perfect her mission and round out her Christian character is the
aim of this little book.
A PRACTICAL book of simple, and yet very valuable, instruction on
/\ the ordinary Catholic practices, is entitled The Principal Catholic
Practices, by Rev. George T. Schmidt, published by Benziger Brothers
of New York. The price is $1.50 net.
FOR students for the priesthood we recommend in a special way
The Young Seminarian's Manual The Manual not only contains
prayers that will aid the student in his devotions, but also special
122 NEW BOOKS [April,
instructions taken from approved Catholic writers that will help and
guide him in the years of his preparation.
The book is prepared by Rev. B. F. Marcetteau, S.S., and published
by the St. Charles' College Press, Catonsville, Md. The price is $1.50.
A BOOK that will be of great use to priests not only for personal
devotion, but in the public direction of the Eucharistic Hour, is
entitled The Eucharistic Hour, by Dom A. G. Breen, O.S.B. (New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.20 postpaid). The volume gives appropriate
readings, prayers and suggestions of meditations for the different
seasons of the liturgical year.
THE recent canonization of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque makes
particularly appropriate the publication of the volume entitled
The Sacred Heart and Mine in Holy Communion (New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. $1.15 postpaid). These are meditations drawn from
the titles of the Sacred Heart and the writings of the Saint herself by
Sister Mary Philip of Bar Convent, York. The preface is by Mother
Mary Loyola. The meditations will be very helpful for private devo-
tion and also for the conduct of the Holy Hour.
A BOOK of quite thorough research and, consequently, of valuable
information is Mary's Praise on Every Tongue, by Father P. J.
Chandlery, S.J., with a preface by Father Bernard Vaughan, S.J. (St.
Louis: B. Herder Book Co.). Father Chandlery has exhausted almost
every channel. He shows how our Blessed Lady is honored by the
Saints in every land, by religious orders, by scholars, by children,
how she has been honored in herself, and in her manifold privileges.
It exemplifies the prophecy, "Behold all nations shall call me blessed."
A LITTLE BOOK OF ST. FRANCIS AND HIS BRETHREN presents
with superlative charm the great simplicities and eternal verities
portrayed in the life of St. Francis. The author, E. M. Wilmot Buxton,
is already well known for valuable work in making vivid the lives
of God's heroes. The Little Book is quaintly and fittingly illustrated by
Morris Meredith Williams, and will be found delightful by both
children and adults. (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.10.)
A MANUAL OF THE CEREMONIES OF LOW MASS, compiled and ar-
ranged by Rev. L. Kuenzel, is a new, complete and well tabulated
arrangement of the rubrics of Low Mass intended to help the semi-
narian shortly to be ordained, to conversance with this very important
part of his priestly functions. The book is published by the Frederick
Pustet Co. and is much to be commended. The price is $2.50 net.
IRecent Events.
On March 8th French, British and Belgian
Germany. troops occupied the three German towns
of Duesseldorf, Duisburg and Ruhrort.
Ten thousand French and five thousand Belgian troops were em-
ployed in the seizure. Of British, only two squadrons of cavalry
were used in Duesseldorf, the British forces on the Rhine having
been depleted by a draft of three battalions to Upper Silesia. At
the same time as the land advance was made, the Allied Rhine
flotilla sailed up the river to Ruhrort. This general movement
followed the failure of the Germans at their conference with the
Allies at London in the first week of March to meet the Allied
terms laid down at the Paris conference late in January. At the
Paris conference the Entente Powers had demanded of Germany
220,000,000,000 marks ($55,500,000,000) in annuities extending
over a period of forty-two years. At London, the Germans de-
clared the impossibility of paying such a sum and made a counter-
proposal whereby they offered to pay 30,000,000,000 gold marks,
or 50,000,000,000 gold marks less 20,000,000,000 marks, which
were insisted upon as credit for payments already made.
To this proposal Premier Lloyd George replied in the name of
the Allies by delivering an ultimatum, giving Germany four days
in which to accept the Allies' Paris terms or submit an offer
worthy of consideration. Failing a favorable reply, the Allies
threatened the occupation of German cities which, as stated, has
now occurred. In addition, the Allies decided to levy a tax on
the sale price of German goods in Allied countries and to establish
a customs line on the Rhine. Following the Allied decision,
President Ebert issued a proclamation to the German people
calling attention to the injustice of the proceeding, but declaring
that Germany was in no position to oppose force to the Allies'
measures and urging calmness upon the populace. So far the
people in the occupied regions have met the situation with com-
plete passivity.
The three cities named were selected for seizure because, by
their occupation, the Allies will control practically all the German
coal production, and it is planned to place a heavy tax on every ton
of coal in transit. Through Duisburg and Ruhrort passes all the
traffic from the Ruhr Valley to north Germany and the neutral
countries of Holland and Scandinavia, and through Duesseldorf,
124 RECENT EVENTS [April,
s af^v*V"r:< '"'-. ' % .
^. .,,, -.
all the Ruhr traffic to south Germany and central Europe, with
the exception of perhaps a tenth part, which passes by rail
overland.
Since the occupation, complications have arisen out of the
Allied decision to collect a fifty per cent, tax on all German-made
goods sold in Allied countries, as Italy, which needs German
goods, has refused to levy such a tax. Moreover, Belgium objects
to so high a rate as fifty per cent., but has intimated that it might
agree to a lower tax, provided all moneys collected by such a tax
in Allied countries were turned into a common fund. To this
Lloyd George said he was opposed, because it would be impossible
for Great Britain to share with Italy, who wanted no tax. He
insisted that, as originally planned, each country should apply
the money collected by this means to the reparation debt due
it from Germany. The common opinion seems to be that the
difficulties of the new tariff scheme are even greater than the
military difficulties. Germany's answer to the Allied policy is a
business strike, and the whole question now hinges on which
side can hold out the longer.
The mobilization of the men and women throughout Germany
entitled to vote in the Upper Silesian plebiscite, began early in
March in twenty of the large German cities. Rallies are being
held daily throughout the country for the purpose of inspecting
all those eligible to participate in the plebiscite, which is to be
held March 20th to determine whether Upper Silesia shall be
German or Polish. It is estimated that at least 200,000 Germans,
eligible to vote, will be sent to the plebiscite region, the Govern-
ment providing free transportation for each voter and a place at
which to stay till the election is held.
Reports of the elections for the Prussian Landtag held on
February 20th, show that the Majority Socialists carried 118 seats,
the Centrists 90, the Nationalist Party 63, the People's Party 57,
the Independent Socialists 28, the Democrats 26, the Communists
20, and the Economic Party 4. Thus the Government coalition
parties still have a majority in the Prussian Parliament, although
the majority has been greatly reduced in consequence of the
setback of the Democrats and Majority Socialists as compared
with their position in the retiring National Assembly. The Ex-
treme Right, or National Party, drew most of its gains from the
more moderate People's Party, while the Extreme Left, or Com-
munist Party, got one-fourth of the Independent Socialist vote
at the last Reichstag elections. The rather unexpected gain of
the Regular Socialist Party was due mainly to the fact that many
workmen became tired of the constant quarreling of the Inde-
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
125
pendents with the Communists, and for the same reason many
voters in the labor districts remained away from the polling dis-
tricts.
The German dye industry has set a new record for the first
two months of 1921. Before the War, German production of
dyestuffs was 135,000 tons annually. Last year the total reached
145,000 tons, the largest amount ever produced in one year in the
industry's thirty years of existence. In January of this year,
however, the total production was 13,000 tons, and in February
15,000, and at this rate, which it seems probable will continue,
Germany will produce this year about 178,000 tons of dyestuffs!
Early in the summer it is hoped to have on hand large stocks of
the colors most in demand, and the financial position of the dye
concerns will permit of these stocks being sold at extremely low
figures, for the express purpose of conquering foreign markets,
especially Great Britain and the United States, which are Ger-
many's two great dye competitors. An intensive campaign is
being organized and will be opened in a few months. Already
the German dye industry is doing very well in the Far East and
in South America, in both of which regions sales have even now
surpassed the pre-War figures.
Economists assert that at least 5,000,000 Germans are pre-
paring to leave the Fatherland for the United States, Mexico and
South America as soon as they are able to raise passage money
and, in the case of the United States, can obtain admission. A
majority of the prospective emigrants have expressed a prefer-
ence for South America. Official and unofficial circles have dis-
played considerable uneasiness over the class of men now emi-
grating or preparing to emigrate, these being, as a rule, the most
able-bodied and enterprising. One cause of this emigration is
conceded to be the war taxes, particularly the tax on incomes.
Despite general agreement among political economists that
Germany is overcrowded and that unless radical readjustments
are made within one year, the nation will be able to support only
fifty per cent, of the present population, suggestions have been
made that the Government take immediate steps to regulate the
number and quality of emigrants. With this in view, a new law
is being drafted. It is argued that the tide of emigration could
be turned back upon Germany to good purpose. Germany's arid
lands, if irrigated or drained, would be capable of supporting
10,000,000 additional persons, it is said, and the Government has
been urged to make this land available to the numbers now
flocking abroad.
126 RECENT EVENTS [April,
Throughout the month reports have been
Russia. persistent of serious internal revolts against
Soviet rule, occurring chiefly at Moscow
and Petrograd. Because of the strict censorship, the reports
have been vague and fragmentary, but the following seem to be
the facts:
The anti-Bolshevik risings in Moscow, which occurred toward
the end of February, were more in the nature of trade-unionist
strikes than military operations, and were quickly suppressed.
The belief is expressed, however, that settlement of the trouble
was by force, rather than by an amelioration of the economic
difficulties, and that additional strikes may be expected to occur
at any time with increasing seriousness. The first reports stated
that the strike was instituted by 14,000 employees of the Govern-
ment works and in various industries, particularly the printing
industry. The men demanded an increased bread ration, the
convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the right of free
trade.
The situation in Petrograd remains obscure, official circles
abroad limiting definite statements to the fact that Kronstadt
and several other fortresses on the south shore of the Gulf of
Finland are holding out against the Bolsheviki. The revolutionists
consist of sailors and laborers, chiefly the former, and Kronstadt,
the principal fortress, which stands on an island at the head of
the Gulf of Finland and commands Petrograd, is the centre of
their organization. What is apparently the most authentic in-
formation of the exact nature of the revolt comes from Finland,
and is to the effect that no attempts are being made to reestablish
the old Tsarist regime or even to overthrow the Soviet system,
but that the revolt is against the military dictatorship of Lenine
and Trotzky.
Latest reports state that Kronstadt has commenced a bom-
bardment of the suburbs of Petrograd and that the battleships,
Sebastopol and Petropavlovsk, have joined in shelling the town.
Krasnoya Gorka, a Soviet stronghold, is said to have surrendered
and to be now occupied by Kronstadt troops. It is added that the
revolutionary leaders, having landed a sufficient number of troops,
have commenced an outflanking movement against Petrograd,
using Krasnoya Gorka as a base. It is reported that Oranienbaum
on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, is partly in ruins
and that fires are raging there.
Trustworthy news from the interior of Russia shows that
anti-Soviet revolts are spreading throughout the country. The
food situation is described as catastrophic, no food trains having
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
127
reached the country from Siberia since February llth. The situa-
tion is made more serious through the congestion of the transport
system. On the main railway from Perm to Vologda three hun-
dred trains are being held up.
The greatest importance is being attached abroad to a recent
official Bolshevik dispatch. This dispatch admitted that commu-
nication between Moscow and Siberia had been cut off for a fort-
night, and indicated that the smoldering opposition of the peas-
ants was becoming active. The leaders of the revolutionary move-
ment now developing are entirely unknown in Russian political
circles, which indicates that the movement is non-political and
comes from the broad masses of the people.
London dispatches quote what is affirmed to be reliable in-
formation: that the garrisons of Pskov and Smolensk have re-
volted, that in Tula, Serpukhoff and Kolemna (respectively one
hundred miles south, fifty-seven miles south and sixty-three miles
southeast of Moscow) the workers have expelled the commis-
saries and proclaimed a general strike, and that the peasants
of the Ukraine, Western Siberia and the Ural are in open revolt.
Besides a dozen or more main insurrections, many anti-Bol-
shevik bands are reported to be operating under stimulus of the
Kronstadt movement. East of Kiev and the Volga River region
there are five bands, the most important of which is headed by
General Makno, the Ukrainian anti-Bolshevik leader, who recently
consolidated his forces with those of General Antonoff. These
bands are said to number from 10,000 to 15,000 men, all mounted
and well equipped. These irregular forces have defeated the
Bolsheviki in several encounters east of Kiev, but the Bolsheviki
have tightened their hold on that capital and are preparing to
defend it from within and without.
Tiflis, capital of the Republic of Georgia, is again in the hands
of the Bolsheviki, after their previous capture of and expulsion
from that city. A provisional Soviet government has been set up
in Tiflis, and Bolshevik troops appear to have completely overrun
Georgia with the exception of Batum, Georgia's principal Black
Sea port. Batum has fallen into the hands of Turkish Nationalist
forces, although the Bolsheviki were apparently making a general
advance against it, and as a result hostilities between the Turks
and the Bolsheviki are declared to be probable. Experts on the
Near Eastern question declare the Caucausus question is very
much involved, Turkey claiming not only Batum, but Bjrim as
well.
American diplomatic and military officials in Japan, China
and Siberia have placed before the American State Department
128 RECENT EVENTS [April,
and War Department detailed information of the military move-
ments of Japan in Siberia, and have informally advised the Tokio
Foreign Office that steps towards increasing the Japanese army of
occupation in Vladisvostok and the environs have been reported
to this Government. Reports from American observers in Siberia
indicate that the Japanese Government is gradually augmenting
its force of two divisions in the Vladisvostok territory, and that
the new troops sent there are not replacements of the old guard,
as was originally agreed upon by Japan when the Allied author-
ities decided upon the necessity of having armed contingents in
Siberia. It is believed here that Japan's intention is to make the
Siberian force four complete divisions and not confine it to two
divisions, the strength consented to by the United States. It has
been directly charged by American observers that Japanese troops
are interfering with the operations of the Siberian railroads.
The peace negotiations between the Russians and the Poles
at Riga, which last month were reported to have been successfully
concluded on February llth, have been discontinued, according
to a recent dispatch to the London Times from Riga. The Bolshe-
viki say that the cessation is due to the illness of their chief
representative, M. Joffe. The negotiations seem to be hopelessly
tangled up with French, British and German political and com-
mercial plans. The Germans are anxious to prevent the comple-
tion of the Treaty before the plebiscite in Upper Silesia, believing
that the failure of the Poles to complete a treaty with Soviet
Russia, would lend color to the German contention that Poland is
weak, and that a Bolshevik invasion of Germany is imminent.
Although the text of the Franco-Polish agreement, which was
under discussion during President Pilsudski's visit to Paris last
month, has not been made public, it is understood that its terms
bind France to furnish material and technical aid to Poland if
that country should be attacked from the east or from the west.
France would not be compelled, however, to send troops to
Poland. On its part, Poland agrees, it is understood, to recon-
stitute the French military mission to her Government and to
give a stronger organization to her army. The economic accord
regulates commercial relations and tariff provisions between the
two countries. A third accord provides for the constitution of a
Franco-Polish company to exploit the petroleum industry in
Galicia.
The Council of the League of Nations, which has been en-
deavoring to settle the dispute between Poland and Lithuania
over Vilna, definitely decided, at last, to go back to the old diplo-
matic method of direct negotiation. Both countries placed so
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
129
many obstacles in the way of holding a plebiscite in the Vilna
area and tried to lay down so many preliminary conditions,
the plebiscite plan had to be dropped. The representatives of
both countries were asked by the Council to consult their Govern-
ments as to the possibility of reaching an accord by direct nego-
tiations under the auspices of the League. The Lithuanian Gov-
ernment has since accepted the proposal of the Council for meet-
ings with the Poles. These are to be held at Brussels under the
Presidency of Paul Hymans, Belgian representative on the League
Council. This decision of the Council automatically puts an end
to the plan to send a League force to keep order during the Vilna
plebiscite, and at the same time ends the difficulty with Switzer-
land, which refused to allow a League army to pass through her
territory. Meanwhile, serious uprisings have been reported from
Vilna and a number of people have been killed and wounded.
General Zellgouski's provisional government has been discon-
tinued, and a new government, said to be directly controlled by
the Poles, has taken its place.
Leonid Krassin, Bolshevik trade envoy to England, recently
returned to London from Moscow with authority to sign the
long proposed commercial Treaty between Great Britain and the
Soviet Government. It develops, however, that he has also brought
with him amendments that would change the entire complexion
of the Treaty. One of these clauses would allow the Bolsheviki
to continue their propaganda, and this is considered impossible
of acceptance, or even of serious consideration, by the British,
and a breaking off of the negotiations will follow if it is per-
sistently urged by the Soviet representative. On the other hand,
the opinion prevails that if Krassin will give up his contention
for the propaganda clause, the chances are good for the early
conclusion of the agreement.
Besides their decision to occupy German
France. cities, discussed above, the Allied Supreme
Council at their London conference made
other important decisions, especially with regard to the revision
of the Treaty of Sevres, between the Allies and Turkey. Under
the new settlement, which is the direct result of Constantine's
restoration to the Grecian throne, the Greeks will lose much of
what they would have acquired under the Sevres document. The
disputed provinces, which under the Sevres pact would have gone
to Greece, are disposed of by the new plan as follows: Thrace
will be placed under international control. Smyrna will be auton-
omous under Turkish sovereignty. The Turkish flag is to fly
VOL. cxm. 9
130 RECENT EVENTS [April,
from the city hall, but a Greek garrison will be posted in the
city. The vilayet will be run under a sort of joint control. The
Governor will be a Christian, probably selected by the League of
Nations. Constantinople is to remain in the hands of the Turks,
who will also retain a large share of the financial and military
control of the city. The straits, however, will not be under their
control. The Greeks are to occupy Gallipoli on one side, while
the British hold Chenak, on the Anatolian side. The British may
make a second Gibraltar of Chenak, for it will become a British
naval station and garrison, with perhaps a Turkish governor
to preserve the dignity of his country.
In addition to its decisions respecting Germany and the
revision of the Turkish Treaty, the Supreme Council notified
Austria that it is now ready to discuss the situation in that coun-
try, and it made a demand for the delivery of all the military
material not yet surrendered under the Treaty of St. Germain.
The Supreme Council considers a state credit for Austria improb-
able, but it is hoped to assist the Austrian finances by influencing
the states bordering on Austria to relax their custom duties, and
also by arranging credits through private financial sources.
On February 21st the Council of the League of Nations began
a series of meetings in Paris. The most important matter that
came before the Council was a note from the retiring American
Secretary of State Colby, protesting against the award of a man-
date to Japan over the island of Yap, and demanding equal op-
portunity for United States nationals in Mesopotamia, over which
Great Britain has a mandate. The American contention concern-
ing Yap, which was formerly a German possession, arises from
the fact that Yap is the centre of cable and radio communication
in fhe Pacific, and the American Government desires that the
cable station there be internationalized. This it does not consider
feasible if one nation be the mandatory of the island on which
the cable station is situated.
The League, in its reply, concedes the right of America to be
consulted regarding Mesopotamia, but declares that the mandate
for that territory is not yet before the Council, but that it will be
discussed at its next meeting in May or June, when it invites an
American representative to sit with it. In addition to the reply
from the Council, the American protest called forth a note from
the British Government, which, while in the main agreeing with
the Colby definition of the principles controlling mandates, flatly
declares that it will not "discriminate" against its own nationals,
maintaining that British subjects obtained monopolistic rights
in Mesopotamia before mandates were conceived, and even before
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
131
the outbreak of the War, and that these rights must be upheld.
With regard to the protest on Yap, the Council of the League
disclaimed responsibility for the inclusion of Yap in the Japanese
mandates, and places the responsibility for this upon the Supreme
Council of Allied Premiers, to which it has referred the American
note in a desire "to promote the possibility of an amicable arrange-
ment."
The French Government has decided to send former Premier
Rene Viviani as a special envoy to the United States to plead the
case of France before the new Administration and the American
people. The mission, which is to be at the same time diplomatic
and popular, arises from the French belief that America does not
properly understand France's position, and will endeavor to make
clear the handicaps a separate peace between Washington and
Berlin would inflict on France. President Harding has signified
his willingness to confer with the Viviani mission. The French
Foreign Office has issued a statement that negotiations on the
question of the international debt will form no part of the mis-
sion's activities.
Late in February the budget of the Ministry of War for the
year was reported cut by the commission of the Chamber of
Deputies which had it under discussion. The budget, as reported,
stands at 5,144,000,000 francs, the commission having cut 1,402,-
000,000 francs from the requested 6,546,000,000 francs.
At a meeting presided over by President Millerand, the Gov-
ernment nominated three new Marshals of France in the persons
of Generals Fayolle, Lyautey and Franchet d'Esperey. Their pro-
motion to the highest French military dignity, which has been
expected for some time, brings the number of Marshals up to six,
the other three being Joffre, Foch and Petain. The name of Gen-
eral Castelnau had also been mentioned as a candidate, but as he
has adopted a political career and become a member of the
Chamber of Deputies, his promotion to a Marshalate was felt to
be inappropriate.
The outstanding feature of the month's
Italy. news from Italy has been the number and
severity of riotous and sanguinary clashes
between the Communists and Fascisti, or Extreme Nationalists,
constituting a veritable cyclone of bloodshed sweeping over Central
and Southern Italy. Florence, Bari, Bologna, Trieste, San Marco,
Cerignola, and numerous other places have been the scene of
terrific violence in which many persons have been killed. A state
of siege has been proclaimed in the provinces of Ferrara, Bologna,
Modena, Reggio, Parma and Piacenza.
132 RECENT EVENTS [April,
The avowed purpose of the so-called Fascist!, or militant
Nationalists, is to purge the Peninsula of all revolutionary ele-
ments when those elements become active. Their genesis was as
follows: when the Treaty of Rapallo, which made Fiume a free
city, deprived the Nationalists of their patriotic object, they looked
around for some new inspiration. The Legionaries of d'Annunzio
on their evacuation of Fiume, found themselves similarly unem-
ployed. The action of the Communists in allying themselves
with Lenine under the banner of the Third Internationale, brought
the two groups together and gave them a new mission, which they
prepared to carry out under the name of Fascisti. Failing to
save Fiume for Italy, they were determined at least to save Italy
from Lenine.
Besides many persons killed in the places named, hundreds
were wounded in the promiscuous use of hand grenades, firearms
and knives. In Florence alone, where a three-corned fight among
the carabinieri, Fascisti and Communists, resulted in heavy casual-
ties to the troops, sixteen persons were killed, while the number
of wounded was between three and four hundred.
In reprisal for the destruction of the Trieste Labor Chamber
by the Nationalists last month, three hundred Communists, armed
with rifles, overpowered the customs guard at San Marco, seized
the great dockyard there, and set fire to the offices and work-
shops. At San Marco is situated one of the largest naval con-
struction works in Italy, employing six thousand persons, and the
adjoining oil factory, which was also involved in the conflagration,
afforded work for another one thousand. When the flames were
finally subdued, $5,000,000 worth of property had been consumed,
with all the supplies of material for the trans-Atlantic liner,
Duchess of Aosta, then in course of construction.
In addition to bloodshed, general strikes have been in effect
in practically all the scenes of disturbances. The situation in
the provinces is considered grave, though there is apparently no
danger of a political revolution. The Government is acting with
energy, having distributed troops which it is believed will control
the situation.
The Italian political situation has become so intricate and
economic conditions so complex, that national parliamentary elec-
tions are now generally discussed as holding out the only hope of
cure for many evils. The feeling has been growing for some time
that the Giolitti Government has proved unable to cope with the
difficulties that have beset it. The people are in turmoil. The
Socialists and Communists have both split into factions and are
fighting among themselves. The Liberal party has split into the
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
133
Active Nationalists, the Fascisti or Extreme Nationalists, and a
group of nondescript Liberals who are supposed to play a leading
part in the country's government, but who are unable to do much
because of the disruption of the majority parties.
The national budget, although reduced now far below the
War figure, is still giving rise to considerable concern. Taxes and
means of meeting the expected budget deficit are being discussed
in Parliament, although formal action is not to be taken until
after the Easter recess. Among the measures being proposed by
the Government as a means of raising money, is a tax on for-
eigners in the country.
As to the budget, ten months ago it had mounted to 14,000,-
000,000 lire, but has now been reduced to 4,000,000,000 lire. In
general, the financial situation is bad. The 1919-20 budget showed
a deficit of 13,500,000,000 lire. The estimates for 1921-22 fix
revenues at 14,750,000,000 lire and expenditures at 24,000,000,000
lire. The present annual deficit equals the entire national debt
before the War, and 20,000,000,000 lire of it are pledged to the
United States and England in gold. Italy needs raw material more
than anything else, but it is practically impossible for her to pur-
chase it abroad at the present rate of exchange.
A more favorable side of the picture is afforded by the grow-
ing frugality of the people, as evidenced by the fact that between
June, 1914, and June, 1920, the total deposits in banks and savings
banks increased from 7,595,000,000 lire to 20,659,000,000. More-
over, there is reason to expect a good wheat harvest for 1921, and
emigration is assuming its pre-War proportions. All these factors
cannot fail to influence the exchange, and so make available the
imports so badly needed in industry.
Late in February, fire in the world-famous church at Loreto,
containing the Holy House of Loreto, destroyed the altar and the
statue of the Blessed Virgin. The altar was the work of several
mediaeval artists, but the wooden statue of the Virgin, reputed to
have been carved by St. Luke, was only less sacred than the Holy
House itself. Government experts have instituted a searching
inquiry into the cause of the fire, but the matter remains a
mystery. The official report absolutely excludes the short circuit
theory, while looking upon the story of pillage as still unproved,
because immense quantities of fused gold and silver mingled with
scorched precious gems appear to be among the ashes. The value
of the jewels that were consumed in the flames, comprising a
wonderful collection of big pearl necklaces and many others in
gold, set with diamonds, rubies and sapphires and crosses com-
posed of emeralds and amethysts, is estimated at about $2,500,000.
March 17,
With Our Readers.
r> OMETIMES we belittle our fellows and think the world a sorry
place. We grow despondent : and the color that drapes our own
soul is extended over all the world. Man is a microcosm in more
senses than one. Considering what the world has passed through
in the last seven years, one can state a very strong and plausible
argument to show that we are not justified in being optimistic:
that joy is ill assumed in the presence of so much sorrow, and
humanity has so fallen down before tremendous opportunity
that the safest course is an uninspiring realism, an attitude of
facing cold facts and never permitting disappointed enthusiasm
to react in pain upon the soul. And yet it is true that to them
who trust the larger hope, the greater response, the greater joy
comes, and measuring man not by the years, but by the decades, it
is they who do succeed and to whom humanity answers.
Cardinal Gibbons was born in 1834. He is eighty-six years
of age. For many years he has occupied the most important and
responsible position in the Catholic Church in the United States.
But recently, he granted an interview to the noted publicist,
Bruce Barton. The interview is published in the American Maga-
zine for March. To American Catholics it is a most timely and
important message. In the space allowed us we will endeavor
to give some of its more salient points, but the article should be
read in its entirety.
* * * *
44 1 HAVE been sick," the Cardinal said with a smile. "Just a hard
1 cold, and I have had to curtail my engagements. But when your
Editor wrote that your interview would be read by millions, including
at least a million and a half young men, who can refuse so much
youth, so much of future power and influence I" He glanced up keenly.
"You are young yourself, I see. I like young men."
"I notice that your secretary and your associates are all young
men," I suggested.
"That's part of the secret of warding off old age," he answered,
with a smile whose freshness belied his years. "When a man begins
to look back, then he is old. I never look back. . . . Until my recent
sickness I used to walk every afternoon from five to six, and whom did
1 choose for companions? Students from the Seminary. They come
from every part of the United States: one day a man from Massachu-
setts, another day one from Oklahoma, and so on. They tell me their
hopes and their ambitions and their plans.
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 135
"And do you want to know what I say to them? I say: 'Young
man, expect great things 1 Expect great things of God; great things
of your fellowmen and of yourself. Expect great things of America.
For great opportunities are ahead; greater than any that have come
before. But only those who have the courage and the vision to expect
them, will profit when they come.' "
He spoke very rapidly, never hesitating for a word. It was the
voice of a man who has found life good, in spite of the confessions of
sin and of failure that have been poured into his ears; of one whose
look is still forward.
* * * *
WORK, in the view of the Cardinal, hard work, with a proper
amount of recreation, was a sine qua non of a buoyant, hope-
ful soul.
"And with work I should class patience as another necessary
element in any large achievement," he continued. "Oh, the impatience
of youth! What a driving force it is; and what a ceaseless cause of
anxiety and unhappiness. It is only as we grow older, that we realize
that nothing greatly significant has ever been achieved in a day. Youth
looks ahead for a week or a month or a year; middle age thinks in
terms of ten years, perhaps, and it is only when one has lived a long
time that he understands how slowly important changes take place.
Our view of history is so short, even among the wisest of us I How far
back does it reach? A mere moment of six thousand years or so. And
back of that stretch the thousands and millions of years in which the
Almighty was molding the universe slowly, so slowly, into conformity
with His plans.
"I did not know Abraham Lincoln. He died a few years after I
entered active life; I looked upon his features only once, and that at
his funeral. But the impression that his tremendous patience made
upon me as a young man has never been forgotten. How long he waited
for events to work themselves out I How uncomplainingly he bore with
obstruction and contradiction 1 To young men I would say again:
'Study Lincoln; learn to possess your soul in patience. Count upon
contradiction and disappointment as a necessary part of the programme
of life the stuff out of which character and manhood are made. And
do not think, because the goal you hope for is not achieved imme-
diately, that your effort has been lost. No honest work is ever lost.
Somehow it finds its place in the eternal scheme of the Almighty for a
better, happier, kindlier world. And the children of One in Whose
eyes a thousand years are as a day, have no duty but to do their
honest best, leaving the final results in confidence and faith to Him!
* * * *
"IN the third place, I would name economy thrift as one of the
1 vital assets in success. That sounds trite, I know. It is very trite,
very old. Yet no matter how often it is repeated, the number of men
who take it really to heart is all too few. . . .
136 WITH OUR READERS [April,
"The law of God is the law of thrift; and no man transgresses that
law, either in his personal or business affairs, without incurring a
penalty. I have seen millionaires, whose wealth seemed without limit,
caught and made paupers in a period of business reaction. They had
lived too lavishly, and reached out in their greed too far. And I have
seen comparatively poor men, who had saved their money, take ad-
vantage of just such periods to invest in independence. Waste nothing,
as nature wastes nothing. Expect some bad years, as nature expects
them, and provides for them by other years of abundance. Count on
the routine effort of year after year, as nature counts on the unending
and unchanging procession of the seasons. This, and not luck, or the
rich fruits of speculation, is the real secret of success."
* * * *
YOUNG inexperienced men are bewildered at the first great dis-
appointment they experience, much as the first man was
bewildered by the first sunset.
"But we who are older have seen the sun set and rise again many
times. We have passed through many so-called panics. How well
I remember the trying days following the Civil War, and the bitter
weeks of '73, and Black Friday, and all the rest.
"Yet the pendulum swung back, prosperity returned again; and
men, made wiser by their reverses, were better prepared to use its
blessings wholesomely and unselfishly.
"There is a verse in the Bible that reads thus: 'Whom the Lord
loveth He chasteneth.' That is a hard verse for youth to learn; a very
hard verse, indeed. But we who are older know its meaning. The
chastening of adversity is an act of love on the Father's part, and not
of punishment. Human nature is not fitted to stand the strain of un-
remitting prosperity. Neither individuals nor nations are yet perfect
enough to resist the weakening of moral fibre that inevitably results
when riches come too easily. Men forget the simple teachings of their
childhood; they forget too often the obligations of home, of self-sacri-
fice, and of religion. Then comes a check; the easy profits of the
prosperous years slip away; we learn all over again how evanescent
a thing wealth is, how poor a foundation on which to build a life.
And we go back to our homes, back to simple living and clear thinking,
back to our churches, back to God. So when the sunshine of better
days returns, it finds us less eager to strain after a mere living, and
knowing better how to live.
"Winter and spring and summer and fall are all parts of the
eternal plan. And the trials of winter are as necessary as the warmth
and comfort of summer in God's great machinery for building men.
Men men of character and ideals! That is what the world needs most.
* * * *
"I SAID at the beginning," repeated the Cardinal, " 'Young man, expect
1 great things.' And I say it again at the end. I have lived almost
three times as long as the average age of your readers. I have watched
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 137
men climb up to success, hundreds of them; and of all the elements
that are important for success, the most important is faith. Those who
throw up their hands in discouragement when the first snow falls, fail
to profit when the sunshine of spring returns. And no great thing
comes to any man unless he has courage, even in dark days, to expect
great things; to expect them of himself, of his fellowmen, of America,
and of God."
NO man can tell with absolute exactness when the light of
morning breaks upon the world. A short while ago, it was
not there. Now the darkness is receding : the light has come. Its
coming in its gradual advance and ascent is in itself inviting,
glorious. The light bears its own testimony of dignity: of power:
of triumph. Through that power it both gives and reveals the
beauty of the world: and that beauty is by degrees, and in part,
seen by the beholder with human eyes and human soul, and he
is filled with the exaltation and the inspiration of life.
# * * *
AS there is this visible day without, which is the redemption
of the world from its chaotic darkness and meaninglessness,
so also is there the visible day within which redeems the soul,
man in himself, from darkness and despair. If God said, looking
with merciful eyes on the material universe: "Let there be light,"
so did His infinite mercy extend to the soul of man, to its temporal
and its eternal life.
We know not when the light breaks in upon our soul. No
doubt it has been there since infancy. One English poet was so
convinced of this, that he even placed its coming to the soul
before the soul was. We may strain our memory and there, far
off in almost unremembered days, our soul recalls the word, the
passage, the experience, the example that brought a spiritual light,
urged us, showed us the way to what we felt, even then, was the
higher, obligatory life. For those to whom the gift of Catholic
faith was given, the light never failed. Yet even here, while the
light itself never fails, the soul may cause its temporary setting:
the soul may know the coldness and the darkness of failure.
To those to whom the Faith is not a matter, so to speak, of
birth : a light known and accepted from infancy, with which the
soul and the body have grown from the beginning, the light of
God shines dimly and, perhaps, not at all. They have their inti-
mations: their inspirations: their hopes: their determinations.
They have stood upon the hilltop and watched: and then, grown
weary and skeptical, they have gone again down into the valley,
where the darkness is deeper. The inspirations have been allowed
138 WITH OUR READERS [April,
to die. The sensible and the evident have conquered. They yield
to the easier way. The light still endeavors to break in : God never
leaves them alone. They are oftentimes unhappy: dissatisfied:
they feel that while they have a hold upon life, they do not possess
life: and then this also gives way to the appeal of the present:
the pleasure of lesser offerings, the satisfaction of the intellectual,
the absorption in family and social life.
* * * *
YET no man ever escapes the struggle. Every one of us makes
some endeavor to escape from the night. No one lives or
would confess that he lives in utter darkness. To put the higher
in the ascendancy: to know the answer to the better yearnings,
these, if listened to at all, will inevitably draw from life the
answer that life is ready to give, the dawn that she can always
bring truth and peace. And to the soul that so yearns, the story
of a fellow soul that has likewise sought, and then found, must
be of inestimable value. The solidarity of human kind bestows
evidential value upon the spiritual experiences of our fellows. The
external, the objective must be used to check up those expe-
riences and differentiate them from the purely imaginative and
subjective. To make a personal experience real enough to have
universal value, that experience must have notes of being larger
than the individual experiencing it: must prove that he has seen
and evidenced a truth that, while it develops self, is inimical to
selfishness: while seeing truth, has seen a truth beneficial to all
mankind: and while satisfying self, has also seized upon that
which would satisfy all humanity. This is the lesson to be drawn
from the lives of the holy ones of God. And the lesson to be
drawn from the examples which God, in His mercy, grants to
some individuals today.
The soul that gropes for the light inevitably seeks to know
if others seek as it seeks. Conscious of its failure and its infidel-
ities, it would be comforted did it know that others were as in-
constant and unfaithful as itself. Out of the doubt and the per-
sonal weakness, it might be lifted if it knew of another who had
traveled with equally halting steps the hill whence cometh our
help.
* * * *
SUCH we believe to be the extraordinary narrative contributed
to the March issue of this magazine under the title "The Open
Window." Communications from our readers have supported
our own judgment. All have said that this quest of a soul is
appealing: effective: inspiring. Its simplicity and sincerity are
undeniable. It echoes in its beginning the experience of the
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 139
millions. Personal human failure makes it akin to all of us.
Unselfish surrender renders it immune from the charge of sub-
jective and imaginative. The reward was bought at a great price
humility: separation: poverty: courage: but the reward must
be sought and purchased by any man who seeks peace. And the
peace that descended upon that soul, the vision vouchsafed him,
the life temporal and eternal which he possesses, the high noon
sun of truth which floods his soul is not this the light and the
life for which all humanity was made and for which all humanity
yearns?
* * * *
TO us who are of the household of the Faith, it is most blessed
evidence that Christ lives and works and reigns. Is it not also
stimulating that a stranger can come and lead us to appreciate
more fully the gifts that are ours since birth? Have we not
grown, not too familiar with them but too accustomed to them?
The light that ever shines within us has perhaps grown to be
as commonplace as the ordinary day. We, too, need to realize
that it is the Light not of earth, but of heaven. And when this
realization comes, we shall begin to interpret every word we utter,
every thought we have, every act we perform, not as our own
but as the act and word and thought of Christ, Who is our Light
of Life and in Whom we live and move and have our being.
LAST month we spoke of certain Catholic books that should be
known and read by our Catholic people. In order to draw
special attention to it we speak here of a new Catholic volume
which will be of particular blessing and joy to Catholic children.
Nor do we wish to limit it to children, for we have read it with
much personal delight. The volume is entitled A String of Sap-
phires a phrase selected from the Prophecy of Isaias. It is a
recital in poetic form of the principal events and mysteries of the
life and death of our Blessed Lord. Mrs. Eden's name as a poet
is already widely known and highly respected. In this volume,
on which incredible labor must have been expended, both her
poetic vision and poetic diction attain a very high standard of
expression. She is not a versifier: she is a poet, with the power
to throw fresh beauty upon old eternal truths and to make of
human speech something like a fitting vehicle for the divine
word. To the compilation of the work, the author has brought
true scholarship and, by notes at the end of the volume, gives
information of all her sources, and differentiates between history
and legend.
140 WITH OUR READERS [April,
The Catholic mothers and their children throughout the
English-speaking world will be always indebted to her. It is a
delight to read the book by oneself: to hear it read: or to read it
to others.
THE following personal and intimate appreciation of the late
Louise Imogen Guiney has been sent to us by Miss Anna T.
O'Connor :
"Since the sad news of the death of Louise Imogen Guiney,
poet and essayist, reached America early in November (sad for
all but her), a shower of letters and criticisms in regard to that
rare woman has besprinkled our press, but few amongst them
have approached, in true perception and depth of appreciation,
Father Daly's beautiful tribute which appeared in the November
20th issue of America, and Miss Katherine Br6gy's most inter-
esting paper printed in the January number of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD. Father Daly's article is all the more extraordinary in
that he never knew Miss Guiney personally; but with a sure in-
stinct he has traced the source from which that remarkable per-
sonality sprang and developed her profound Catholic Faith.
Miss Bregy also has rightly sensed this to be the secret of her
peculiar charm as a woman, of her distinction as a poet and
scholar. It is with diffidence that I venture to add anything at
all to these very comprehensive articles, but it has occurred to
me that our Catholic public might be glad to read an even more
personal account of that gifted woman, and so I have made this
attempt to portray her, not as the poet and scholar (which
cleverer pens have already done), but as the Catholic gentlewoman
I knew her to be.
* * * *
"TTjiROM 1909 till 1914 I lived at Oxford: rich years, made richer
1 by the presence and friendship of Louise Guiney, for it was
there that I began to know Miss Guiney well, and to feel the full
charm and power of her entire being. We saw eye to eye in
almost every field of thought and feeling surely a rare experi-
ence in human intercourse ! She was not beautiful to the casual
observer but she was in no sense ugly; of about medium height,
with a well-rounded figure, not stout; brown, very fine hair, which
had not turned visibly gray when I last saw her in 1913; grayish-
blue eyes which required the constant wearing of spectacles, eyes
which met yours steadily, penetratingly, benignantly, often hu-
morously; softly modeled features, a remarkably smooth, unlined
face, and smooth, kind-looking hands. Her smile was irresistible,
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 141
her voice low and harmoniously modulated. She was extremely
simple and unfashionable in her dress, and in all the externals of
her life. Except in nuns, I think I have never seen such youth-
fulness in a mature woman's face the reward, no doubt, of her
inherent purity. (Michelangelo expressed this great truth in
the face of Our Lady in his incomparable Pieta.) And she had
the merry, frank, infectious laugh of an innocent young girl.
Throughout her whole being there shone the undying youthful-
ness of those who 'shall see God* that youthfulness which seems
to be the special prerogative of certain Catholic women. I have
seen it in poor old women whose lives have been one long chain
of hardships and sorrows.
* * * *
"/^vNLY the other day, in an old notebook, I came across the
\J following extract from one of Mrs. Craigie's writings. She
is speaking of religion, and what might be called the perpetual
atmosphere of the soul which it alone creates. She says: 'The
Catholic faith, which ignores no single possibility in human
feeling and no possible flight in idealism, produces in those
who hold it truly, a freshness of heart very hard to be under-
stood by the dispassionate critic who weighs character by the
newest laws of its favorite degenerate, but never by the
primeval tests of God/ At once I thought of Louise Guiney,
of her joyous freshness of heart through trials that would have
overwhelmed the average woman living outside the bright fields
of her spiritual existence. Though living on a limited, sometimes
woefully limited, income, her generosity was boundless. I have
known her to take the last shilling from her purse to give to one
in greater need, so complete was her confidence in God's provi-
dence towards those who follow His higher counsels of perfec-
tion. She cared nothing for material possessions, but she cared
enormously for her friends, for her ideals, for her art, for true
beauty in every guise. Her quaint little house at Oxford was a
shrine of pilgrimage to many a visitor from far and near, both
distinguished and otherwise, and to all these she gave almost too
generous a share of her time and attention. Delightful as all my
intercourse with her was, it was at the daily eight o'clock Mass
at the Jesuit Church of St. Aloysius at Oxford that the inner life
of Louise Guiney was most clearly revealed to me. She knew the
liturgy of the Church almost by heart, and she used neither missal
nor beads at Mass, as a rule, but just quietly knelt there, her
hands clasped in front of her, her eyes steadily fixed on the altar,
and I think there are no words in any language that can describe
adequately the expression of her whole countenance during that
142 WITH OUR READERS [April,
sublime half-hour, an expression which invariably brought to my
mind the line of Wordworth's : "Quiet as a nun, breathless with
adoration."
* * * *
"npHIS past summer there appeared in one of our magazines
I which has, in general, a well-deserved reputation for literary
excellence, two articles in reply to Mrs. Katherine Gould Gerrold's
wise and piercingly far-seeing paper on certain tendencies on the
part of a large class of our young people and their weak, inef-
fectual parents and guardians. As I read these two articles, one
by a youth, the other by a last year's debutante, I instinctively
contrasted their deep-rooted vulgarity, their flippancy, their ex-
traordinary hardness, their superficiality and very evident lack
of knowledge of the true meaning of life, their lack of genuine
culture, with the character and equipment, the attainments, the
personality, the high-breeding of a Louise Imogen Guiney, who
was so clearly and unmistakably the product of obedience to the
Ten Commandments, and of love for a definitely defined Faith,
both of which virtues were very obviously despised by those two
pitiful young persons.
"It would be difficult, perhaps, to make the average American,
unacquainted with the peculiar appeal of life in pre-War England
to a person of Miss Guiney's tastes and gifts, understand why
she chose to make her home there. One purely material reason,
however, will be clear to all: and that is that she was able to live
there comfortably, and with dignity in a home of her own, on
what would not have given her a hall-bedroom in New York or
Boston. But she had graver reasons, based on the particular
nature of her work.
* * * *
"rxURING a part of her Oxford life she lived with a cultivated,
LJ large-hearted fellow countrywoman, Miss Harriet Anderson,
and it was in their little parlor that several beneficent and inspir-
ing Catholic activities were conceived and elaborated, the now
flourishing Newman Society of Oxford University being one of
them. She loved various forms of pageantry, and sighed for a
return of the true merrie life of the old days of Catholic Eng-
land. But, above all, she had a veritable passion for souls, even
as had the Jesuit poet she so greatly admired and appreciated,
Father Gerard Hopkins this passion for souls which is only
mistily understood by so many otherwise admirable critics. It is
a pity, for instance, that Mr. Robert Bridges did not consult her 1
1 This estimate is confirmed by Miss Guiney's own words in an article on "Digby
Dolben," whose works Mr. Bridges also edited, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, September,
1912.
1921.] BOOKS RECEIVED
143
before he published some of the notes in his recent edition of
Father Hopkin's poems! But, perhaps, there is a blindness which
is more or less a willful blindness, a congenital blindness !
* * * *
E was the highest example of the Christian gentlewoman,
courageous, humble, generous, candid, loyal, joyous, true as
steel, and of swift, sure sympathies the gracious flower of a
gracious soundly-Catholic education and training. There really
was no one quite like her, and I can think of no one to wholly fill
her place. Mrs. Meynell comes the nearest to it, perhaps: there
was a strong spiritual kinship between them; but Miss Guiney
lived on even more exalted and detached heights, it seemed to me.
Grant us, when this short life is spent,
The glorious evening that shall last;
That, by a holy death attained,
Eternal glory may be gained.
"This was her prayer in life: who can doubt but that it has
been generously answered in her death? And so I dream now,
as surely all who loved her dream, of the canticles of love and
praise and joy which must be pouring from that great heart
today."
BOOKS RECEIVED.
E. P. BUTTON & Co,. New York:
Essentials of Mysticism. By Evelyn Underbill. $3.00 net. In Search of the Soul.
Vols. I., II. By Bernard Hollander, M.D. $20.00 net. Recurring Earth Lives.
By F. Milton Willis. Tales of JEgean Intrigue. By I. C. Lawson. A Theory
of the Mechanism of Survival. By W. Whately Smith. $2.50 net. A Social
and Industrial History of England, 1815-1918. By J. F. Rees, M.A. The Song
of Roland. By Charles Scott Moncrieff.
GEORGE H. DOHAN Co., New York:
Speculative and Political. By A. J. Balfour. $3.00 net. From Out the Vasty
Deep. By Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. Snow Over Elden. By Thomas Moult. Our
Family Affairs. By E. F. Benson. She Who Was Helena Cass. By Lawrence
Rising. Life and Letters. By J. C. Squire. $3.00 net.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
The Writer's Art. By Rolls Walter Brown. $2.50 net.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York:
House of the Forest. By Constance G. Bishop. $2.00 net. Tressider's Sister.
By Isabel C. Clarke. $2.50 net.
THE CENTURY Co., New York:
The Hare. By Ernest Oldmeadow.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Religion First Course; The Teaching of Religion; Religion First Manual. By
Roderick MacEachen, D.D. History of the United States. Vol. VI. By James
Ford Rhodes, LL.D.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
Political Aspects of St. Augustine's City of God. By John Neville Figges, Litt.D.
$2.50 net. Early History of Singing. By W. J. Henderson. $1.50 net.
BONI & LIVERIGHT, New York :
Invalid Europe. By Alfred F. Seligsberg. What David Did. By Helen S.
Woodruff. The Narrow House. By Evelyn Scott. The Noise of the World.
By Adriana Spadonl.
144 BOOKS RECEIVED [April, 1921.]
FREDERICK A. STOKES Co., New York:
The Lost Knight, and Other Poems. By T. Maynard. The Silver Age of Latin
Literature. By W. C. Summers, M.A. The Sisters-in-Law. By Gertrude
Atherton. $2.00 net. The Divine Adventure. By Theodore Maynard. $2.00 net.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
Comparative Religion A Survey of Its Recent Literature. By J. H. Jordan, B.P.
Donne's Sermons Selected Passages. By Logan Pearsall Smith.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia:
The Mystery of the Sycamore. By Carolyn Wells. $2.00 net.
DODD, MEAD & Co., New York:
A Reference History of the War. By Irwin S. Guernsey, M.A.
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York:
The Age of the Reformation. By P. Smith, Ph.D. The Old Man's Youth. By
William de Morgan.
BRENTANO'S, New York:
The Gentle Art of Columning. By C. L. Edson. Recollections of the Revolution
and the Empire. By La Marquise de la Tour du Pin.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York:
Montagu Wycherly. By L. A. Harker. $2.00. Quicksands of Youth. By F. C.
Hoyt. $1.75.
FREDERICK PUSTET Co., New York:
The Palace Beautiful, or the Spiritual Temple of God. By Rev. F. A. Houck.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
The Greenway. By L. Moore. $2.35.
B. W. HUEBSCH, New York:
Reminiscences of Tolstoy. By M. Gorky.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York:
Old World Traits Transplanted. By R. E. Park and H. A. Miller. $2.50 net.
THE RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, New York:
The American Empire. By Scott Nearing. 50 cents.
JOHN W. LUCE & Co., Boston:
Greek Tragedy. By Gilbert Norwood.
THE FOUR SEAS Co., Boston:
Morning, Noon and Night. By G. W. Dresbach. The Sympathy of the People.
By John Pratt Whitman.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston:
The Diary of a Forty-Niner. By C. A. Canfleld. $3.50.
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston:
Cow-Country. By B. M. Bower. The Strength of the Pines. By E. Marshall.
SULLIVAN BROTHERS, Lowell, Mass.:
Irish Catholics Genesis of Lowell. By George F. O'Dwyer.
BROTHERS OF THE SACRED HEART, Metuchen, N. J.:
Catechism of Christian and Religious Perfection.
B. HERDER BOOK Co., St. Louis:
"Pardon and Peace." By H. M. Capes. $1.50 net. Sermons and Sermon Notes.
By Rev. H. I. D. Ryder. $2.25 net. Elements of Economics. By L. Watt, S.J.
15 cents net. The Christian Mind. By Dom A. Vomer, O.S.B. $1.50 net.
Psychology and Mystical Experience. By J. Howley, M.A. $2.50 net. A Year
With Christ. By W. J. Young, S.J. $1.60 net.
WOODCOX & FANNER, Battle Creek, Mich.:
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BURKLEY PRINTING Co., Omaha, Neb.:
Daisy. By Gilbert Guest.
DOMINICAN SISTERS PUBLISHING Co., Tacoma, Wash.:
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CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, London:
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Breach with Rome. By Cardinal Gasquet, O.S.B. 1 s. net. Freemasonry.
By Rev. H. J. Thurston, S.J. 2 d. The Sisters of Charity Martyred at Arras
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Religion in School. By the Editor of "The Sower." Catholic Defensive and
Progressive Organization. By Edward Eyre, K.C.S.C. Our Separated Brethren.
By Leslie J. Walker, S.J., M.A. The Ship That Was Simon's. Pamphlets.
DANIEL O'CONNOR, London:
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BURNS, GATES & WASHBOURNJE, London:
The Catholic Directory, 1921. 3s. 6 d. net. Catechism Made Easy. By Rev.
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M. H. GILL & SON, Dublin:
Domicile and Quasi Domicile. By Rev. N. Farren. 8 s. 6 d . net.
THE
Catholic &(orld
VOL. CXIII.
MAY, 1921
No. 674
JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS.
AN INTERPRETATION.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
"Can it be that the progress of civilization is to diminish the value
and usefulness of eminent virtues and to weaken men's practical sub-
mission to finer and more cultivated natures." Frederick Harrison,
"Essay on St. Bernard."
AMES CARDINAL GIBBONS died in Baltimore
March 24th at the age of eighty-six. He had re-
mained active in his episcopal work until Novem-
ber, 1920, when he collapsed while conducting
services at Havre de Grace. He recovered tem-
porarily, but none of those who were near him felt any release
from the fear that his race was nearly run. One thought of the
pathetic words uttered by Cardinal Manning: "I am an old
man now. I am slowing into the station." Cardinal Gibbons
was spared practically all physical suffering and the general
breakdown of his mental faculties. His mind remained clear
and his memory was but slightly impaired. He recognized and
interpreted the relentlessness of the days as they contracted the
circle of his life, and death advanced upon him. His episcopal
activities ceased. His priestly functions were ended as strength
waned. Visits to him were terminated. Consultation with
him from many parts of the world became no longer possible.
COPYRIGHT. 1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE AFOSTLI:
IN THE STATE OF NEW YOBK.
VOL. cxiii. 10
146 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [May,
He ceased writing letters. One by one the reaper cut the
anchors that held him to the world. He spoke sweetly of the
easy chair that became his throne when he was too feeble to
leave his room. He gazed unfearing into the grim eyes of
death as it approached. The smile that lighted his counte-
nance and the peace that filled his soul, were due to the vision
of his faith that revealed to him behind the stern messenger
the reassuring glance of the Heavenly Father Whose ambas-
sador he had been.
Cardinal Gibbons died beloved throughout the world. He
witnessed no shrinking of personal influence, no diminution
of love, no reserves in the admiration which his character,
purposes and achievements had won. The manner in which a
kindly Providence sustained him in his gentle eminence con-
tradicts much of the experience of outstanding men. Pity
leads the world to be kind to a man of eighty-six, but pity
was not invited by this great man nor did his admirers offer it.
Every type of man in two worlds who loved great human ideals
and recognized them, offered spontaneous testimony to the
appreciation in which Cardinal Gibbons was held. It is in-
spiring to realize that in a score of nations his death stirred a
stream of comment, of reverent praise and inspiring interpre-
tation practically unequaled in our time.
No one managed this. It could not have been managed.
The tributes were spontaneous and uniform in singling out the
traits that gave him universal appeal. I do not know the
secret of that appeal. It is easy to say that sympathy, under-
standing, patriotism, the championship of noble ideals under
the restraints of practical wisdom and the reserves of suf-
ficient caution are elements that make universal appeal. Yet
these qualities alone do not insure it. No man can compel it.
No man can intend it. To aim at it would be a flaw in life.
Universal appeal is a grace freely given when given, but rarely
given. It was given to Cardinal Gibbons as an unmistakable
blessing of his Creator. It is impossible now to describe him
adequately. It will remain impossible to describe him ade-
quately, largely because the whole man was present in every-
thing that he did. His personality diffused itself through the
life of the nation and the Church. No one thing that he did
expresses him. Yet everything that he did seemed to express
him. As he recedes into the dim distance of multiplied years,
1921.1 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 147
the atmosphere in which he lived and the affection in which
we held him will have been lost. Full records will preserve
many descriptions of him. But he will have no biographer
probably to do him justice. A book depends as much on the
reader as on the writer. When years shall have given to the
world the distance in which to see him in his proportions,
the generations that knew him and loved him and trusted him
will have passed away. The difficulty of the task of inter-
preting him lures one to attempt it. Yet one feels that descrip-
tion minimizes him and analysis fails to account for his power.
Words are of one dimension. How shall they describe the
complexities of any life, let alone those of the life of Cardinal
Gibbons.
The Cardinal was a wonderful man. The nation lovingly
named him as one of its greatest citizens. The Church proudly
held him to be its greatest prelate. Every social class felt near
to him. We were as one in feeling that this man touched
greatness at many points, and we offered him the tributes in
which the human heart exhausts its power of expression. We
gave him complete love. We gave him complete trust.
If the character of Cardinal Gibbons is looked at analyt-
ically and his faculties are enumerated with the cold severity of
logic, we seem to find among them little that is extraordinary.
His mind taken alone without the reenforcement of his qual-
ities would not have singled him out to the world for particular
attention. His qualities taken in themselves, one by one, apart
from his exalted station and encyclopedic experience with life,
lack picturesqueness and ruggedness or the one-sidedness which
is usually associated with power. There was a balance among
his qualities and faculties which adapted them to one another in
perfect proportion, and gave to his character the symmetry and
harmony in seeking which the architect does his most perfect
work. We are accustomed to greatness that is one-sided and
accompanied by compensating limitations. Roughness often
accompanies intellectual strength. Passion to dominate, is as-
sociated frequently with eminent station. Opportunity for self-
aggrandizement betrays at times those who have great power.
It is easy to love humanity and to be mean at home. But one
looks in vain through the character of Cardinal Gibbons for
any such one-sidedness. The symmetry of his character, the
simplicity of his traits, the unreflecting yet gentle directness
148 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [May,
of his ways might have passed almost unnoticed had he been
a local, not a world figure. The human traits that one found in
him, traits that the world has been praising since he died, are
found more frequently among lesser men than among mighty
leaders. Simplicity, thoughtfulness, toleration, understanding,
insight into human limitations, joyful support of good things,
subtle touch with great truths that lie often unnoticed at the
threshold of the world, are traits of the kind alluded to.
This was an achievement in living. It was an achieve-
ment in national life because the nation has profound need of
great example in these qualities. It was an achievement in
religious life, for religion must look upon exalted example as
a minor kind of revelation that makes more easy of practise
these traits which are rooted in the law of God. The secret of
the Cardinal's universal appeal must be sought somewhere
among these qualities. If his separate faculties and qualities
were not great, their combination in him was a form of great-
ness all too rare in life. If genius consists largely in the fusion
of all the faculties, the instinct of the world found in Cardinal
Gibbons proofs of genius. We may lack the insight needed to
explain his hold upon the trust and affection of the world.
Who can doubt that he had gained that hold and that his
universal appeal resulted from what he was, rather than from
anything that he aimed to be. Every kind of eminence that
had been conferred upon him throughout his wonderful life
was enhanced by the final eminence that death conferred.
When it gave the signal, waiting angels stooped to take his
kindly soul from its shrunken tabernacle. We forgot the
requiem as we saw the sunburst of his glory in the world's
acclaim. We can imagine, as one artist did, that he waved
farewell to the spires of his beloved Cathedral as his soul went
with swift steps upward to the throne of the hidden God. As
he took his departure kings, scholars, statesmen, presidents,
governors, ambassadors, his colleagues in the Church, the
Supreme Pontiff, men, women and little children in many
nations felt the deep sense of loss, and the soul of the world
was moved to reverent speech. Cardinal Gibbons must have
been close to the realities that underlie the structure of the
world in order to have gained these tributes. This is an ele-
mentary fact that must underlie any estimate of him. It is
out of all proportion to the intentions or powers of a single
1921.] JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS
149
man. The world placed the crown upon his head. Seciirus
judicat orbis terrarum.
Cardinal Gibbons was more interested in persons than in
abstractions. He dealt with issues and processes not as ab-
stractions, but as they were expressed in attitudes by their
representatives. Abstractions are very alluring. General
statements dispense with the need of accuracy and erudition.
But Cardinal Gibbons was a personality who remained in close
touch with the world. His life-long contact with leaders in
many fields of human interest gave him an aptitude in acquir-
ing knowledge, and an immediate control of his information
which were quite exceptional. When minds become philo-
sophical and dwell among abstractions by preference, they
tend to lose sympathy with persons and the power to deal with
facts and persons in a simple way. Cardinal Gibbons never
wandered into academic remoteness from life. He remained
near to it, in sympathy with it. In this way he gained practical
insight that gave to his judgment exceptional value.
It is amazing to find that the world, otherwise so divided,
was united in admiration and trust in his character and around
his tomb. It is difficult for men to understand one another in
these days. Religion divides us deeply and too often bitterly.
But representatives of every type of religion found much that
they cherished and trusted in the character, purposes and
achievements of this beloved man. Political theories and party
interests separate men into contending groups, but all were as
one in public homage to Cardinal Gibbons and glad recogni-
tion of his wholesome influence in national life.
Life is divided into stubborn fractions that refuse to merge
into unity and subdued relation. Culture, like morality, is
wholesomeness, judgment of parts in relation to the whole.
But industry, art, science, politics, trade, tend increasingly to
break away from the unity of life and to abandon themselves
to the sway of perverted values. But all of these interests in
social life seemed to find a ground of common understanding
in the way in which their representatives accepted Cardinal
Gibbons as one who symbolized the ideal unity that should
hold the world together. He showed that it is still possible
to merge all of the interests of life in the sympathies of a
single individual who represents the ideal of which the world
falls so far short.
150 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [May,
No historian will show the extent to which the sheer
personality of Cardinal Gibbons became a factor in the defence
of the Christian faith and of the practical morality that is its
fine flower. Is there a priest, a bishop or an archbishop
in the United States today whose work has not been made
more effective and whose obstacles have not in some way been
diminished by the incredible personal influence of Cardinal
Gibbons? I doubt if there is one. There can be no census of
the willful bigots whose work he set at naught; no record
of the misrepresentations of his Faith and its relations that
were shamed out of our national life by his character and his
deeds. A secular daily, not given to much preaching, ex-
pressed the view that the example of Cardinal Gibbons in the
life of America had done incredible things in keeping the
young men of the nation right-minded and clean of life. Per-
haps it will require some years without the influence of his
presence to enable us to realize the diffused power of his
personality in the nation's life. It would be well not to over-
look this intangible achievement in estimating his place.
The Cardinal was an old man. Old men are exposed to
the tyranny of memory and the woes of disillusionment.
Settled ways are easy ways and old men love their ease. They
see all things ending. They think much of their own end.
They acquire a distaste for beginnings, for new effort that de-
mands freshened outlook and courage. Their friends die
about them. New generations assume leadership and old men
are crowded out or forgotten. They surrender reluctantly.
Nature has harsh ways of dealing with old men. The illusions
of age dominate them. They dislike innovation, and as the
circle of their solicitude shrinks, they become timid, contented
with things as they are and obstacles to progress. Old men are
conservative men. They are not enthusiasts. They are his-
torians rather than prophets, keepers of the past, not trustees
of a new day.
Now Cardinal Gibbons escaped these penalties of great
age. He continued to see the value of new endeavor, and he
blessed with intelligent courage new activities before which
younger colleagues remained silent and cautious. His open-
mindedness and deep personal interest in the creation and sup-
port of the National Catholic War Council as a war measure
and the National Catholic Welfare Council as a permanent
1921.] JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 151
plan of hierarchical reorganization show all of this. Four
years ago, at the age of eighty-three, he displayed a courage
and understanding in respect of these steps which would have
honored a man of forty. He foresaw difficulties, but he under-
stood the new demands that our national life made upon the
Church. He knew that her message was to the future and that
it had not been exhausted in the past. He did everything that
the burden of his years permitted as possible to him, and was
stirred to action, not discouraged from it, by the difficulties
that awaited these epoch-making steps.
An outstanding trait of the Cardinal's character and mind
lay in his failure to strive after originality. It was almost dis-
concerting to discover on meeting him that there was nothing
unusual about him. He was free from affectation. His per-
sonal dignity was the outcome of wisdom, simplicity and Chris-
tian insight into human values. That dignity attracted. It
never repelled. The Cardinal's manner of speech was direct
and simple. He encouraged others to speak and listened
always with encouraging quiet.
Men who seek distinction, aim to be original. The obvious
is not dramatic. It is not new and, therefore, it lacks interest
for shallow souls that do not sound the depths of life. Cardinal
Gibbons had no fear of commonplace truths, for truth is never
trite. Only the expression of it becomes trite. The Cardinal
said obvious things with simple words. He fixed his attention
upon the truth that he uttered and not upon the effect that he
might make. In this way he compelled attention to the ele-
mentary truths of spiritual and social life that we love to
trample under foot with reckless abandon. Whether he spoke
to little children or to a congregation or to men in whose
hands the providence of God placed the great responsibilities
for the direction of life, his thought and its style of expression
were simple, direct and effective. When he spoke he saw only
his listener, and not the world beyond. He gave no thought
to headlines. He believed that he saw things truly and in
their real relation. He described them as he saw them. He
addressed himself to the human instinct that longs for truth.
Thoughtful men and women throughout the world heard him
and believed.
This trait of His Eminence must have been one of the
elements in the universal appeal that he made. Such has been
152 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [May,
our experience with leaders that many like to find and an-
nounce their limitations. Perhaps this is a compensating con-
solation permitted to mediocrity. We are tempted to adapt
ourselves to the vanities or other failings of great men. In-
cense of its very nature floats upward not downward. There
are those who like to be acolytes to greatness, to swing censers
because it is assumed that great men are vain men. Now the
simplicities, the kindliness and the sympathies of Cardinal
Gibbons seemed to discourage such things. When occasion
required them and Tightness of motive prompted them, he re-
ceived honors and recognition with a childlike simplicity that
was charming. Cardinal Gibbons was powerful because he
was simple, and his simplicity invited love. It never de-
manded service.
The spiritual vigor of Cardinal Gibbons and the pieties
of his daily worship never isolated him from his fellowmen.
He was intensely human because he liked to deal with persons.
He had imagination, which is the instrument of sympathy,
and with it the self-control that is the ambassador of common
sense. His religion was his life. He paid no price in dimin-
ished spiritual zeal for his sturdy interest in human things.
He loved his Church. He loved Church authority in the con-
crete not alone in the abstract. He was kind to his priests,
delightful among friends, tender toward those who gathered
about him in his household. He was all of this because "he
dwelt always in the high regions of his soul."
Cardinal Gibbons loved his Baltimore. He was proud of
its traditions and its history. His Baltimore loved him in
return. His genius and his preferences made that love the
basis of a mighty local patriotism. Baltimore could not, did
not, refuse him any tribute of its complete love.
Cardinal Gibbons loved his country. He interpreted its
ideals in practical words, and judged its institutions from the
standpoint of clear insight into historical processes and into
the limitations of all institutions whatsoever. He accepted
American institutions not because he had to, but because he
loved to do so. The direct and simple way in which he always
seized an opportunity to strengthen the loyalty of citizens and
set the example of civic honesty and patriotic courage to the
world, made him dear to the American heart. The words that
he uttered in defence of our institutions had the ring of genuine
1921.] JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 153
metal. He offered no counterfeits. He served not by phrases.
His heart was as noble in its patriotism as the noblest words
that he uttered to express it.
Cardinal Gibbons loved his Church. He was always a
Christian, priest, bishop. His Church was the authorized in-
terpreter of God and of the Son of God to the world. His
natural traits were sympathetic with everything Christian.
The supernatural ideal appealed to him profoundly. The
divine harmonies of revelation echoed sweetly throughout the
pillared temple of his soul. His thoughts, preferences and
hopes caught and repeated those divine echoes faithfully, and
the world that shared not his Faith, listened with kindness
when he spoke and paid him the superb tribute of trust.
One is sometimes disposed to describe an exceptional man
by insisting on what he was not. One might say, for instance,
that Cardinal Gibbons was not a great immediate organizer,
that he was not original, that he was not a resourceful fighting
leader, that he was not gifted in the ways of original research.
Why should he have been gifted in these lines? It is alto-
gether arbitrary to describe types of greatness not found in a
leader when we are called upon to describe the type of great-
ness that he did possess. The effects of events are always
suspended. We are compelled to await the consequences of
an action in order to judge it. It would be a simple matter
now to analyze the high courage of Cardinal Gibbons in de-
fending the Knights of Labor. It is easy to describe the gran-
deur that he takes on now because alone and against the pres-
sure of men who were greater than he in some lines, he saved
the Catholic University when its disasters had all but ruined it.
One might single out other striking events in his career and
analyze them. But after the task were done, we would find
that we had discovered the same simple human traits with
which we are so familiar, qualities that created effects out of
all apparent proportion to their causes. This is the task of the
biographer. It is not that of the interpreter who wishes to
describe how the transcendent personality of this beloved man
impressed him.
We may view greatness from the standpoint of endow-
ment or of achievement. The best approach to an interpreta-
tion of James Cardinal Gibbons is from the wide circle of per-
sonality and diffused achievement. Had he been a greater
154 JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [May,
and one-sided man, he would have accomplished less. He
might have purchased brilliancy of thought at the price of
universal appeal. We have many who are brilliant in thought
and but few who make universal appeal. He might have been
a greater organizer, had he ceased to be a simple and lovable
man in eminent station. We have many great organizers who
show the roughness that often follows power, but not the
gentleness that so rarely redeems it. He might have been a
great controversialist. He might have defeated a few adver-
saries, but he would not have written the book that brought
the gift of faith to countless souls, and made the work of the
Church so much easier in the world. He might have been ag-
gressive and self-assertive, but he would have lost our love,
and we would not have been ennobled by our abiding trust in
him. Who that loved him would have wished to see his en-
dearing traits sold and paid for in the debased coin of a
cruder power.
A man in eminent station who can inspire universal trust
and win universal respect from the warring factions of a
divided world, has elements of real greatness whether or not
we can find and name them. A man whose personality is as a
flux by means of which the discordant elements of our national
life were fused into harmony, is a national benediction to be
counted among the high favors of heaven. A man who be-
comes like an atmosphere in the moral world, under whose
influence virtues thrive and vices are ashamed, carries within
his soul the springs of greatness whether or not we define and
analyze them. A man who is respected and loved by every
type of great man that his time produces, is himself great
among men. Great men form no alliances to deceive the
world. They obey their instincts as lesser men do.
It will be well for our definitions of greatness if we may
call Cardinal Gibbons a great man. If these definitions do not
include him it will be unfortunate for them. The world is
prepared to reject any definition of greatness that would ex-
clude James Cardinal Gibbons from the small group of great
men to whose hands the providence of God has committed the
destinv of the world.
FIRM FOUNDATIONS.
BY HENRY A. LAPPIN, LITT.D.
MONO the many services which Father Cuthbert,
O.S.F.C., has rendered to the cause of the Faith,
not the least conspicuous is his work 1 in assem-
bling and editing these ten essays in apologetic,
two of which, together with a preface to the work,
are from Bis own hand. God and the Supernatural is a most
significant and valuable addition to the steadily-growing con-
temporary English literature of Catholic apologetic, supplying,
as it does, within the covers of one volume of moderate size,
the essential substance of the Catholic faith in a series of
luminous and eloquent expositions by distinguished scholars,
clerical and lay.
It has long been the custom of Anglican scholars to col-
laborate in works of this general type the symposium. One
readily recalls such books as the famous Essays and Reviews
the Septem Contra Christum as a wag of the day called it
a veritable howitzer shell dropped into the camp of Anglican
theological complacency in 1860; Lux Mundi, twenty-nine
years later, was a much milder cannonade, though as Liddon
wrote to a friend at the time, the concluding portion of Gore's
essay on "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration" came upon him
"as a thunderbolt from the sky," and he regarded it as little less
than "a capitulation at the feet of the young German profes-
sors." Later examples of this cooperative productiveness
among Anglican scholars are Contentio Veritatis (1902) and
the Cambridge Theological Essays (1905) ; but, perhaps, the
most interesting and characteristic compilation in this kind is
the well-known Foundations (1912). (In his Some Loose
Stones, Father Ronald Knox then undergoing the controver-
sial vicissitudes afterwards to be so winningly chronicled in
A Spiritual JEneid published a brilliant and devastating
anatomization of this piece of theological jerry building.) All
these collections were, of course, empirical in aim. To offer a
1 God and the Supernatural. A Catholic Statement of the Christian Faith.
Edited by Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
156 FIRM FOUNDATIONS [May,
final theology was very far indeed from the intention of the
writers. The editor of Foundations, for example, stated quite
frankly that his collaborator's essays were "put forward, not as
the solution, but as a contribution towards the solution of the
problems we have approached, not as a last word even for our
own generation or our own immediate circle, but as a word
that has come to us and one which we believe we ought to
seek."
The writers of God and the Supernatural have had in
mind a vastly different objective. "They have," in the words
of Father Cuthbert's succinct preface, "merely faced the fact
that Christianity as a substantive and intelligent Faith has been
lost and is practically unknown to the people at large; and in
the following pages they have made an attempt to set forth
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Faith as those are
held by the members of that Church which claims, and has
ever claimed, to be the depositary of the Faith of Christ.
They, therefore, expound no new creed, but the true creed of
the Catholic Church." In this exposition there is no trace of
bitterness, and where it becomes necessary for the writers to
discuss the vagaries of contemporary unbelief "they do so,"
the editor points out, "with a deep appreciation of the earnest-
ness and sincerity which commonly lie behind even the
'heresies' as they regard them." The appeal of our essayists
is to the average educated man, and, aware of his aversion
from technical theological language, they have consistently
avoided its use and striven scrupulously to be plain and direct.
It is in all ways fitting that a book, so richly and resonantly
Catholic, so scholarly in quality, so calm, reverent and dis-
passionate in spirit, should have come out of the university
from which sprang the seeds of the Catholic Renaissance in
England, and that the name of an erudite and holy son of St.
Francis should grace its title-page. Of the ten papers three,
"The Supernatural," "The Sacramental System," and "Life After
Death," are from the learned and lucid pen of Father Martin-
dale. Another distinguished Jesuit, Father D'Arcy, writes on
"The Idea of God." Two eminent lay scholars, Mr. Christopher
Dawson of Trinity and Mr. E. I. Watkin of New College, con-
tribute essays on "The Nature and Destiny of Man," and "The
Problem of Evil," respectively. The essay on "The Church as
the Mystical Body of Christ" is also the work of Mr. Watkin.
1921.] FIRM FOUNDATIONS
157
The reverend editor discusses "The Person of Christ" and "The
"Divine Atonement." And the "Introductory" essay is con-
tributed by Father Ronald Knox, late Fellow and Chaplain of
Trinity College.
To take up the individual essays : Father Knox's introduc-
tory statement is a fine analysis of the prevailing temper of the
non-Catholic world at the present hour. For a long time past
men have been leading a hand-to-mouth existence spiritually
and intellectually, no less than politically. Rudderless and un-
captained, the ship of the world has been forlornly drifting
through uncharted seas under a starless sky. Man, by nature
and tradition, lives according to principle, seeking an authority
outside himself, a sanction for what he believes and does. A
comprehensive philosophy of existence, an ordered scheme
of relationships is the crying need of the time. Men grow
weary of conducting their lives by expediency rather than by
principle. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.
"How often," declares Father Knox, "the newspapers ap-
peal for a fearless leader of religious thought who will come
forward with a revised Gospel from which unprofitable dog-
matic speculation shall have been banished, and anything else
calculated to fan the ashes of polemical controversy; a re-
ligion of brotherhood, of optimism, of unquestioning self-
sacrifice! As a matter of fact, religious leaders have been
tumbling over one another to do this for the last fifty years,
and still they are being appealed to. What has gone wrong?
Simply that it is not the leaders who are wanted, it is the rank
and file. Mr. H. G. Wells, of whose hold over the public imag-
ination there can be no reasonable doubt, set about it a year
or two since, but there is still no Wellsianism. This religion
of brotherhood is always popular with men in the mass, with
the tide movement; but religion to be effective, must dominate
the individual, and it is precisely, as a matter of observation,
the individual citizen who has no use for such creeds. They
do not go far enough for him." What the wayfaring man
looks for is a revelation; no system of human origination will
ever satisfy him.
It is chiefly to this unsatisfied yearning of the human spirit
that Father Knox feels justified in attributing the present
vogue of Spiritualism, though he is very sure that it is in-
capable of effecting any but the most transient and local
158 FIRM FOUNDATIONS [May,
appeasement of the current restlessness. For it is a craze, not
a creed.
But there is no human problem, no human need for which
the Catholic faith fails to provide solution and satisfaction.
To a majority of English-speaking men and women Catholi-
cism is an undiscovered world of spiritual adventure. Indeed,
for many people outside the Church the Faith means an
interesting and somewhat fantastic mythology rather than an
actual workaday creed. The time is now ripe, Father Knox
believes, for the apologist to explain and to reveal: to explain
what his religion really is, and hardly less important what
it is not: to brush away the popular misunderstandings and
travesties of it and to reveal the beauty and balance and truth
of its teachings. For the Catholic Church is the only system of
belief which unswervingly clings fast to the Supernatural
(which is assumed as a starting-point, not "ushered in as an
afterthought"), and its principles are fixed in origin and
definite in application.
Father Martindale follows with a lucid essay on "The
Supernatural," the notion and doctrine of which underlies
all Catholic faith and practice. The Church "dogmatically
declares that there is a superhuman life and that it is God's
free will to raise thereto such members of the human race as
freely cooperate with His design, so that they, remaining men,
are yet 'super-natural' men; for this life is not one that
belongs to beings of a higher order, so that men cease to be
men and become that sort of being; nor yet, are men made by
it into a sort of being altogether different. They remain men,
but super-naturalized men." By no mere alteration, ameliora-
tion, or evolution of human life can it be transformed into
supernatural life. This sort of life cometh not by prayer and
fasting even. It is a gift from above, a condescension of God;
and man has no title to it, nor of his own effort is he capable
of achieving it. Of grace or "free gift" (gratia) it comes. By
Adam, in his fall, it was lost, and we, his descendants, "by
virtue of our social solidarity" with him enter, at first, upon a
life that is only natural, a life darkened by the shadow of
Original Sin. We regain this free gift of a life that is super-
natural only "through our incorporation with a Second
Adam, Jesus Christ, Who being true Man is truly a Second
Head to our race, and being God contains all life by nature
1921.] FIRM FOUNDATIONS 159
and in its source." Felix culpa qu.se tantum ac talem meruit
Redemptorem.
And since every form of life has its special and fitting
form of consciousness, so also has the supernatural life. To
lead such a life means to know, to be united with, and to enjoy
God. Here Father Martindale suggests a beautiful analogy
between the love of a man for a woman worthy of his love
and the love of the soul for God. The man grows to abhor all
that in him which is repellent to the woman and strives to
purge, his life of everything that could constitute an obstacle
to the fullest and finest exercise of her love for him and his for
her, and the strength and splendor of her goes out to meet and
elevate and consecrate whatever is kin to them in him. So is it
with the human soul and God to Whom it is bound by the
bands of the supernatural life. Unless we clearly apprehend
this doctrine of the supernatural life of the soul, all Catholic
dogma must remain void of meaning. Indeed, asserts Father
Martindale, "I will go further, and say that without it our
chance of understanding history in the past, and even the
psychological problem of the race today, is practically lost.
And again, that all ambitions of social reform, all schemes for
the world's salvation, are, if they exclude God's supernatural
vocation of humanity, so essentially inadequate as to be
doomed to failure."
Father D'Arcy expounds "The Idea of God" with convincing
eloquence. In this doctrine the Church bases its affirmations
upon Revelation as well as upon Reason, and no less upon
Reason than upon Revelation, though Reason of itself only is
utterly inadequate to the understanding of God, since He alone
can fully understand Himself. And seeing that men fail so
miserably to win to the secret of themselves, how then should
they attain to the Secret of God? The nature of Revelation is
clearly indicated by this essayist. It does not mean, for one
thing, "a disinheriting of reason to give honor to some higher
occult faculty. Revelation is a response to an overwhelming
practical need. Man's lot would be pitiable, if with his frail
intellect and unsteady desires he had to fulfill God's designs in
his short and never to be repeated life, without any help from
on high. ... An answer was needed, and it came. If that
answer was authentic and God's own word, then Revelation is
the central fact of human history and the space of nineteen
160 FIRM FOUNDATIONS [May,
centuries cannot leave it behind." From a consideration of
the proofs for the existence of God the writer passes to a dis-
cussion of the nature of God and of God's relation to the
world. Appropriately, at this time, he takes occasion to ani-
madvert scathingly, but justly, upon the absurdity of H. G.
Wells' finite God, a conception the essayist observes prob-
ably borrowed by Wells from the late William James. "He
[Wells] makes as interesting a picture as he can, but I fear
we should be as disappointed if we met his God as Henry VIII.
was with Anne of Cleves." Father D'Arcy defends Catholic
theology against those who accuse it of overlarding the idea of
God with definitions, and he remarks with perfect truth:
"When excessive speculation is imputed to Catholicism, let it
be remembered that it is her adversaries who, like Ixion, em-
brace a cloud for a divinity, or trespass on ground consecrated
to God alone. Orthodox theology is the defence of certain
precious facts: God's unique Personality, His creation of us
through love, our independence and, at the same time, fulfill-
ment in Him. These are the facts we live by; loyal to them,
we can advance into speculation, until the converging lines
are lost in God."
Father D'Arcy's essay rises to heights of stylistic distinc-
tion unattained by any other contributor to this remarkable
volume. There are moments one is moved to comment-
when his words produce all the emotional effects of symphonic
music. This is as it should be : the truths of Faith deserve for
their clothing a stately garment of speech. O si sic omnes!
In "The Nature and Destiny of Man," Mr. Christopher Daw-
son acutely criticizes the naturalistic views of Professor Bateson
and Dr. Bertrand Russell. Russell's gorgeous rhetoric in The
Free Man's Worship he reduces to the paradoxical conclusion
that "we must love a good God Who does not exist and refuse
to serve Nature which does exist, but is not good," and he
shrewdly surmises that such a creed as this is scarcely likely
to appeal to average human nature! The mistake of those
who maintain Christianity to be a failure, adds the writer, is
that they regard it as merely an external system of law,
whereas in truth it is "a spiritual force which can transform
human nature only by the consent and cooperation of the indi-
vidual will." Christianity is first and foremost a life.
Upon "The Problem of Evil," Mr. E. I. Watkin offers a pro-
1921.] FIRM FOUNDATIONS
found and illuminating disquisition. That a final solution of
this problem is here unattainable, Mr. Watkin is frank to
admit, and indeed his belief is that if there be a providential
purpose in the fact of evil, this purpose would suffer defeat by
a final solution. In other words, the existence of evil is essen-
tially a testing of our faith. As Browning's Bishop Blougram
asseverated :
Some think, Creation's meant to show Him forth;
I say it's meant to hide Him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
But Mr. Watkin is sure that "the amount and force of good
in every department far exceeds the amount and force of evil,"
and that ". . . the predominance of moral good over evil is a
demonstrable fact of experience." The fundamental purpose
of evil in the world Mr. Watkin would resume in the two
words, struggle and solidarity. "Through struggle we must
attain to victory. Evil is not to be explained away, but to be
met and conquered. And we can meet and overcome the
world's evil, not in solitary combat, but in the solidarity of
Christ's mystical body redeemed humanity."
It would be difficult to praise too highly the reverend
editor's own contributions, "The Person of Christ" and "The
Divine Atonement." Of these subjects we know of no similar
brief treatment in English that is worthy of comparison with
Father Cuthbert's two essays, which are thoughtful, earnest,
clear, and abound in passages of spiritual elevation and high
conception.
Lack of space forbids more than the merest mention of
Mr. Watkin's contribution on "The Church as the Mystical
Body of Christ" or of Father Martindale's short study of "Life
After Death;" but we must refer, if only very briefly, to the
latter essayist's brilliant pages on "The Sacramental System,"
the logical connection of which, with the rest of Catholic creed
and practice, is set forth lucidly and attractively.
Through the Incarnation the supernatural life was made
possible for us, Jesus Christ being true God and true Man
Et Verbum caro factum est. God's operations upon the soul
here below are, therefore, by means partly spiritual, partly
material. These means are the Sacraments of the Church.
Father Martindale, in a fine figure, describes them as "
VOL. CXIII. 11
162 FIRM FOUNDATIONS [May,
creative kiss upon the soul," and shows how they "create a
harmony between the infinite and eternal God and the hum-
blest of His creation, and effect a solidarity between God,
Christ, ourselves, and nature." And he discusses the part
played by the Sacraments in the whole scheme of the super-
naturalizing of mankind, taking up each sacrament individ-
ually. Particularly beautiful and helpful is his brief excursus
on Marriage, a sacrament which is the symbol and type of the
union of Christ with His Church and of the union in Christ's
nature of the divine and human. What he says upon the sub-
ject of birth-control is well worth quoting here: "It defies
nature, and even a priori may thus be recognized as an attack
upon society; and we are certain that sociology all modern
prophets notwithstanding protests against it. Conditions of
life are nowadays appalling; but Catholics will never be dis-
lodged from their position that they do demand that marriage
should not be tampered with, but that the economic frame-
work of society itself must be corrected; and Catholics will
never cease to labor for this end. If a married man and
woman have heroically to control themselves, or to resign
themselves to bringing up several children with fewer advan-
tages than one or two might have, and to sacrifice motor-cars
to morality, their martyrdom lies at the door of the unscrupu-
lous plutocrat, who himself will be too selfish to have more
children than they have, or can have, save the illegitimate ones
whose existence he will probably have forgotten; and not at
the door of Christian ethics. Physiology itself declares, what
the Catholic faith does, that pleasure is, however natural,
utterly subordinate, in the association of man and woman, and
that life must not be tampered with." We make no apology for
this lengthy quotation in a short review. Would that these
ringing words might be copied and prominently displayed by
every Catholic newspaper, nay, by every newspaper of what-
ever creed in America !
God and the Supernatural is a great book. No library
should be without it. It is at once a treasury and an armory.
To it, under God, many a man in days to come will owe his
soul. The authors of it deserve our thanks, our praise, and our
prayers.
THE RIGHTNESS OF G. K. CHESTERTON.
BY MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.
RS. GEROULD did us all a service by pointing out
the Remarkable Rightness of Rudyard Kipling,
and it is astonishing how easily she convinced
almost everybody that she and Kipling were re-
markably right. It remains now for somebody
to point out the Remarkable Rightness of Gilbert Keith Ches-
tertion; or, if you want a qualification, say his Relative Right-
ness, in that Kipling's Tightness can be proven by the historical
event, while Chesterton's Tightness must be proven by spiritual
experience. Relative Tightness is the very least the present
writer will accord him. It preserves the alliteration, and
allows for a certain comparison of his Tightness with other
Tightnesses. One may concede that he occasionally sacrifices
positive Tightness for the joys of contradiction; but the con-
tradicted idea is usually wrong.
When we first read Chesterton we are a trifle dizzy. It
seems as if all his ideas were standing on their heads, waving
their feet in the air. Then we reflect that at some time or
other we have all had our little say about the topsy-turvyism
of most popular conceptions; and we begin to suspect that it
was not Chesterton's idea of any given thing, but the generally
accepted idea, that was standing on its head. And the more
we study his paradoxes, the more convinced of his Tightness
do we become. There is the very question itself of paradoxes,
for example. Mr. Chesterton says that paradoxes are true,
and that truth is always paradoxical; and we have only to
examine the elemental truths of living to realize this. The
higher truth can never be reduced to a formula; at any rate
not until we have a larger view than our position on this
planet can afford us. "The truth is," he says, "that the tra-
dition of Christianity (which is the only coherent ethic of
Europe), rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries, which
can easily be impugned in argument, and as easily justified
in life. One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or
faiththat the more hopeless the situation, the more hopeful
164 THE RIGHTNESS OF G. K. CHESTERTON [May,
should be the man." This, of course, occurs continually, and
is continually justified. He finds that "solemnity is the direct
enemy of sincerity;" that "the nemesis of the self-centred spirit
is in being totally ineffectual," and (with Stevenson) , that "the
secret of life lies in laughter and humility." These are chance
observations found in opening a single volume at random. But
to quote Chesterton is to embark upon wide seas; one could
sail all day, and then find new waters.
He believes that the only free man is the man of strong
convictions, since only he can move about freely in all direc-
tions from a central anchorage; and that only spiritual
mysteries are broad enough and big enough to be true, since
we cannot measure them with our logical yardsticks. He is
himself a paradox; for he writes startlingly about his own
immovable conventionalities, and these turn out to be rational
convictions after all. He preaches orthodoxy with the manner
of a heretic; and thereby convinces you of the inherent truth
of orthodoxy. With the humor and detachment of the skeptic,
he combines the passion and certainty of the devotee. Stand-
ing firmly upon the old foundations of order and reverence, he
flings his shafts at the bewildered thinker who admits every-
thing and exalts nothing, and the hazy "intellectual" who
sneers at honor, morality and religion. And the whimsical
framing of his dogma makes it more luminous. He tells us
that we only jest about the things that are of the most awful
import, such as being married or being hanged; while men
will talk for hours about golf, or tobacco, or waistcoats, with
the faces of a college of cardinals. In great realities lies
freedom as well as truth.
Chesterton's poems are more modern in tone, less dis-
tinctive, and less spontaneous than his prose. They are more
manifestly the product of a special literary experiment. And
I am not at present concerned with his stories, long or short,
nor his miscellaneous essays, with all their combination of
whim and fancy and fixed conviction. Perhaps the most
characteristic, and, therefore, the most valuable, of all his
voluminous output, is the treatise on Orthodoxy; and the
heart of this volume is the chapter entitled "The Paradoxes of
Christianity." If the book were avowedly a devotional work,
it might well be ranked among the great documents of re-
ligion; on the other hand, it would not find so many readers.
1921.] THE RIGHTNESS OF G. K. CHESTERTON 165
Its oddities of manner attract many who would not touch a
solemn religious treatise; and yet that very manner is the
vehicle for sound and incontrovertible thought on the highest
of all subjects. And it is the kind of thought that combines
imagination, romance, and joy with the foundations of moral-
ity itself. The author says that his acceptance of the universe
(as from the Hand of God) "is not optimism; it is more like
patriotism a kind of primary loyalty." Of ethics he says:
"Men gained their morality by guarding their religion. They
did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and
found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate
cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found
that they were clean."
The book on Orthodoxy, he says, was written in answer to
a challenge. He was asked to give his own reason for the faith
that was in him; and his reply describes the process by which
he not merely discoveredbut rediscovered the truth. His
plea for mystery and reverence has much to do with the width
and comprehensiveness of these fundamental things. Every-
thing else limits us. In Faber's words :
Greatness which is infinite makes room
For all things in its lap to lie;
We should be crushed by an immensity
Short of infinity.
The very inconsistencies of the critics of Christianity form its
strongest defence. For they drive that defence from one point
to another, until it stands as the central fact of all the ages,
impregnable from every side. All this may sound common-
place; you cannot translate Chesterton into the language of
the reviewer. You cannot stand up his salient points like a
row of hills on a geological map. They are the real hills-
wrapped in the clouds and colors of the morning and the
evening, and standing shadowed in the glare of noonday. He
believes in an everyday philosophy, with its childlike incon-
sistencies and its deep-drawn intuitions.
Take his remarks on Jeanne d'Arc, in opposition to Ana-
tole France and, incidentally, to the philosophies of Tolstoy
and Nietzsche: "Joan was not stuck at the crossroads, either by
rejecting all the paths, like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all,
166 THE RIGHTNESS OF G. K. CHESTERTON [May,
like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a
thunderbolt. ... I thought of all that was noble in Tolstoy,
the pleasure in plain things, and the actualities of the earth,
the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back.
Joan of Arc had all that, and with this great addition, that she
endured poverty, as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is
only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then
I thought of all that is brave and proud and pathetic in poor
Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness of our tune.
I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his"
hunger for the rush of great horses, his call to arms. Well,
Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that
she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was
not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was
afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was
the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the
warrior. . . . She was a practical person who did something,
while they are wild speculators who do nothing. . . . She and
her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility
that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one,
and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the
theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which
darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened
that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pity from
his hero's pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous
anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the
idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any incon-
sistency between having a love for humanity and having a
hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, de-
nounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists, with even thinner and
weaker voices, denounce Him as an altruist. . . . There is a
huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the
fragments."
Just here we strike a flaw in our author's philosophy. He
is too pessimistic about his own times; he finds less faith, less
heroism than we really have. It took the Great War to prove
this; but it has been proven. Orthodoxy was written and pub-
lished some years before the War; or in some particulars its
tone might have been different. In quoting, I have not dwelt
upon the paradoxical parts of the argument; in fact I have not
given the argument at all. One cannot give it merely in part.
1921.] THE RIGHTNESS OF G. K. CHESTERTON 167
I have only wished to point out its general quality. There is a
temptation to quote the closing chapter, "Authority and the
Adventurer;" but it must be dismissed with a single phrase or
two: "Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the
gigantic secret of the Christian. . . . There was some one
thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked
upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His
mirth."
Chesterton's joie de vivre, which radiates not only from
his printed page, but from his personality, is also a trait that
he loves in others. He finds it in the poetry of Theodore May-
nard, to whose volume he wrote a characteristic preface.
Maynard, also, is as full of the same joy as is the boy who
whistles forth his instinctive and unreasoning gladness. In
maturity, such joy is distinctly the product of faith and of
reverence, and of these only the inalienable gladness of the
children of God. On Mr. Chesterton's recent visit to New
York, everybody's first comment was: "He isn't as fat as we
thought he was;" nobody said he was not as gay. Even his
hair curls like a boy's; and he has something of Mr. Taft's
easy good-humor, something of Mr. Roosevelt's vitality, some-
thing of Mark Twain's odd humor without his corresponding
touch of quaint melancholy. When I heard him, his subject
was: "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable?" and there was no un-
reality in his assertion of the futility of prediction and of the
prophecy of the wiseacre. Another of his characteristics is the
impression of sincerity which he conveys, both by pen and
spoken word. Here one compares him with Bernard Shaw.
Where Chesterton is almost passionately true, Shaw is cyn-
ically artificial. I heard a prominent English critic speak with
surprise of the fact that Shaw, with all his brilliant gifts, had
made so little impression upon his generation. Afterwards,
I asked if he did not think that the cause of this was a lack of
the essential quality of reverence; and he did not deny the
possibility.
Looking closely at Chesterton's convictions, your soul ]
nounces them true. They were true in regard to the War; they
are true in regard to the writers and teachers of mankind wh
break the morale of the world by believing in nothing,
he says, "the only things worth knowing about any man are
the very last things that he is judged for-his convictions.
168 TO A CHILD [May,
is not now the fashion to consider anyone's attitude towards
cosmic philosophy; but in reality nothing else about him
counts for much." In a day of "liberality," we are surprised
at this; but a moment's reflection convinces us that, after all, we
choose our friends for their philosophy and their ideals, rather
than for any other considerations.
In spite of his medievalism, and distrust of most of the
modern thought, Chesterton's pessimism is not gloomy; he
achieves the effect of "laughter and humility." He defies
analysis; one would grow weary in trying to tell the number
of ways in which this big and joyous man is right. Hear him,
and prove it for yourself. Take the air with him. Get above
the world above the Shaws and the Wellses the cynical
frauds and the solemn frauds the petty fauns who caper
along, shouting with Shaw that "the only golden rule is that
there is no golden rule." Leave them among their cast-off
shreds of morality, and loop the loop with Chesterton. See
things upside down or right-side up; never mind, the things
are there, and they fit into an all-round picture of real living.
Most of his paradoxes are stars; and though we find him occa-
sionally reveling in the mere flash of a rocket, it is always a
rocket that mounts upward with the sane impulse of the joy
of life, and reverence for the eternal heavens.
TO A CHILD.
BY KATHRYN WHITE RYAN.
You are rising up, a Temple! As a Temple rising up!
You are dropping props, my scaffoldings, as you would drop a cup.
O build a high, sunned minaret
On bedded stones my torn hands set !
THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE.
BY JOHN A. RYAN, D.D.
HE end of the State, we have seen, is to promote
the welfare of its citizens, as a whole, as members
of families, and as members of social classes.
Anyone who is inclined to doubt the propriety of
including the second and third of these classes,
will dismiss the inclination as soon as he looks beneath for-
mulas and fixes his attention upon realities.
The State exists and functions for the sake of human
beings. It attains this end primarily by safeguarding those
interests that are common to all the persons under its jurisdic-
tion; for example, by resisting foreign invasion and protecting
life and property. If it stops at this point it will leave unpro-
tected not only many individual interests, but many elements
of the common good, many aspects of the general welfare.
To neglect the integrity of the family or the prosperity of any
considerable social class, will sooner or later injure society as
a whole. To take care of these interests is, indirectly at least,
to promote the common good. Nor is this all. Since indi-
vidual welfare is the ultimate, though not strictly the formal,
object of the State, that object ought to be deliberately pro-
moted by the State, whenever it cannot be adequately furthered
by any other agency. 1 To deny this proposition is to assume
that men have been unable to achieve a political organization
that is adequate to safeguard their temporal welfare. How-
ever, it is neither desirable nor practicable for the State to pro-
vide for every individual as such. It can promote individual
welfare best by dealing with men as groups, through their most
important group relationships; therefore, as members of fam-
ilies, and as members of social classes. When it provides for
the needs that are common to members of these two funda-
1 CA Cronin, The Science of Ethics, ii., 474: "The measure of State function,
therefore, is to be found in the necessities of man and the inability of the individual
and the family to provide these necessities. Anything, therefore, which is necessary,
whether for the individual or for society at large, and which the individual or the
family is not in a position to supply, may legitimately he regarded as included in
the end of the State."
170 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
mental forms of association, it benefits most effectively the
whole number of its component individuals.
What are the specific policies and measures by which the
State can best attain the objects described in the foregoing
paragraphs? To answer this question will be to describe the
proper functions of the State.
Among political writers a fairly frequent classification of
State functions is into necessary and optional, or essential and
non-essential. The former are "such as all governments must
perform in order to justify their existence. They include the
maintenance of industrial peace, order and safety, the protec-
tion of persons and property, and the preservation of external
security. They are the original primary functions of the State,
and all States, however rudimentary and undeveloped, attempt
to perform them." 2 They may be enumerated somewhat more
specifically as military, financial and civil. 3 In the exercise
of its military function, the State defends itself and its people
by force against foreign aggression and prevents and represses
domestic disorder. The financial function of the State com-
prises the collection and expenditure of funds for the main-
tenance and operation of government. Regulations concern-
ing individual rights, contracts, property, disputes, crime and
punishment constitute the State's civil function.
The optional or unessential functions are calculated to
increase the general welfare, but they could conceivably be
performed in some fashion by private agencies. They com-
prise public works; public education; public charity; indus-
trial regulations, and health and safety regulations. 4 Under
the head of public works are comprised: control of coinage
and currency and the conduct of banks; the postal service, tele-
graphs, telephones and railroads; the maintenance of light-
houses, harbors, rivers and roads; the conservation of natural
resources, such as forests and water power, and the ownership
and operation of supply plants and municipal utilities. Public
education may include not only a system of schools, but
museums, libraries, art galleries and scientific bureaus, such
as those concerned with the weather and with agriculture. In
the exercise of the functions of public charity, the State estab-
3 Garner, An Introduction to Political Science, p. 318.
3 Holt, An Introduction to the Study of Government, pp. 268-281.
4 Holt, op. cit., pp. 285-305.
1921.] PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 171
lishes asylums, hospitals, almshouses, corrective institutions,
provides insurance against accidents, sickness, old age and un-
employment, and makes various provisions of material relief
for persons in distress. In the field of regulation, as distin-
guished from that of ownership, operation, or maintenance,
the State supervises public safety and industry. Regulations
of the former kind relate to quarantine, vaccination, medical
inspection of school children and of certain businesses and
professions, and protection of public morals in the matter of
pictures, publications, theatres and dance halls. Industrial
regulation extends to banks, commerce, business combinations
and the relations between employer and employee.
The classification of State functions as necessary and
optional has the merit of presenting a comprehensive view of
political experience. It enables us to see how States have in-
terpreted their scope, and distinguished between functions that
are essential and functions that are non-essential. While all
fully developed States have regarded as essential the functions
which are so designated in the foregoing paragraphs, not all
have agreed in conceiving the so-called optional functions as
of that character. Some of the optional functions have been
regarded by some States as primary and essential. And the
number of optional functions that have been undertaken
varies greatly among the various States. The factor deter-
mining the course of the States in this matter has been mainly,
if not exclusively, expediency.
A somewhat analogous classification is used by many
Catholic writers. While conforming fully with political expe-
rience, it is also based upon fundamental principles of ethics,
and it illustrates the principles of logic. It is thus stated in
summary form by Cathrein. 5 The functions of the State are
twofold: first, to safeguard the juridical order, that is, to pro-
tect all rights, of individuals, families, private associations and
the Church; second, to promote the general welfare by positive
means, with respect to all those goods that contribute to that
end. Substantially the same classification and principle is laid
down by Meyer, 6 Castelein, 7 Cronin, 8 and Lilly. 9
In a general way the primary functions in this classifica-
B Philosophic. Moralis, no. 545. a Institutions Juris Naturalis, ii., no. 317.
T Philosophia Moralis et Socialis, p. 446. The Science of Ethics, pp. 472-479.
8 First Principles in Politics, ch. iv.
172 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
tion correspond to the necessary, or essential, functions in the
grouping made by the political writers. While the second
group of functions denoted by the Catholic writers resembles
the second category of the political science manuals only in a
general way, as regards content, there is a considerable differ-
ence of principle. The secondary functions described by the
political writers are said to be optional, and their optional
character is determined mainly by the varying experience and
practice of particular States; but the positive promotion of
general welfare is regarded by the Catholic writers as normal
and necessary, because required by the fundamental needs of
human beings. According to the Catholic writers, the differ-
ence between the primary and secondary functions of the
State is not a difference of kind, but only of degree. As noted
by Meyer, the primary functions are not sufficient: the State
must not only safeguard rights, but promote the general good
by positive measures of helpfulness. 10 This is the general
principle. In carrying it out, the State may properly under-
take some particular activities which are not obligatory, but
only more or less expedient.
The concrete activities which fall under the primary func-
tions of the State may be summarized as follows: All natural
rights must receive adequate protection. The State is obliged
to safeguard the individual's rights to life, liberty, property,
livelihood, good name, and spiritual and moral security.
Whence it follows that laws must be enacted and enforced
against all forms of physical assault and arbitrary restraint;
against theft, robbery and every species of fraud and extor-
tion; against all apparently free contracts which deny the op-
portunity of pursuing a livelihood on reasonable terms;
against calumny and detraction; and against the spiritual and
moral scandal produced by false and immoral preaching,
teaching and publication.
In the individualistic theory, the first two classes of enact-
ments are held to exhaust the functions of the State, apparently
on the assumption that they cover all the individual's rights.
This is a grossly inadequate conception. Reasonable oppor-
tunities of livelihood, reputation, spiritual and moral security,
are all among man's primary needs. Without them he cannot
develop his personality to a reasonable degree, nor live an
10 Loc cit.
1921.] PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 173
adequate life. Therefore, they fall within the scope of his
natural rights. For natural rights include all those moral
powers, opportunities and immunities which the individual
requires in order to attain the end of his nature, to live a reas-
onable life. Any arbitrary or unreasonable interference with
these is a violation of the rights of the individual. Hence the
unfair competition carried on by a monopoly, unreasonable
boycotts, wage contracts for less than the equivalent of a
decent livelihood, untrue or otherwise unjustifiable statements
derogatory to a man's reputation, utterances and publications
calculated to corrupt his religion or morals are all injurious
to the individual, and are unreasonable interferences with the
security and development of his personality.
All the foregoing rights should be safeguarded by the
State, not only as exercised by the individual, but also as
involved in the reasonable scope of associations. Hence the
family, the Church and all legitimate private societies have a
just claim to protection by the State in the pursuit of all their
proper ends. Men have a right to pursue their welfare not
only by individual effort, but through mutual association.
A corollary of State protection of rights is State deter-
mination of rights. To a very great extent the reciprocal
limits of individual rights cannot be satisfactorily adjusted by
the individuals themselves. This fact is most conspicuously
illustrated in connection with property rights, but it receives
frequent exemplication in other sections of the juridical prov-
ince.
While all the rights above described have a general claim
upon the State for protection, not all of them have an actual
claim to adequate protection at any given time. This is a ques-
tion of prudence and expediency. What the State may
normally be expected to do, is one thing; what it is here and
now able to do is quite another thing; for example, with regard
to false religious teaching and scandalous moral teaching.
Perhaps the most comprehensive and practical principle that
can be laid down is this : the State should not attempt to protect
any right beyond the point at which further efforts threaten
to do more harm than good.
Secondary functions can be conveniently described by
following the order outlined in the paragraph which enumer-
ated the so-called optional functions. In general, the second-
174 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
ary functions cover all activities that cannot be adequately
carried on by private effort, whether individual or corporate. 11
Public Works: Under this head are included all those
industries and institutions which the State not merely regu-
lates, but owns and manages. The control of coinage and
currency are undoubtedly among the necessary functions of
government. Almost equally necessary is the government
postal service. Telegraphs, telephones, railways, water supply
and lighting may in a sense be called optional functions, since
the general welfare does not always require them to be oper-
ated by the State. When public operation is clearly superior
to private operation, all things considered, the State undoubt-
edly neglects its duty of promoting the common welfare if it
fails to manage these utilities. It is a necessary part of the
State's functions to provide such public safeguards as fire
departments, lighthouses, buoys and beacons; to maintain such
instrumentalities of communication as roads, canals, bridges
and wharves; and to conserve such natural resources as forests,
water powers and watersheds. None of these activities can
be satisfactorily performed by private enterprise.
Public Education: As the child belongs primarily to the
parents, so the function of education is primarily theirs. Both
these propositions are demonstrated by the facts and require-
ments of human welfare. In very exceptional cases only can
the education and upbringing of the child be controlled and
carried on as well by the State as by the parents. Nevertheless,
the common welfare does require the State to take a rather
important part in the work of education. It is summarized in
the following excerpts from the Pastoral Letter of the Amer-
ican Hierarchy, issued in 1920.
As the public welfare is largely dependent upon the intel-
ligence of the citizen, the State has a vital concern in edu-
cation. This is implied in the original purpose of our Gov-
ernment which, as set forth in the preamble to the Constitu-
tion, is "to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common de-
fence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
In accordance with these purposes, the State has a right
to insist that its citizens shall be educated. It should en-
11 Cf. Meyer, op. cit., ii., p. 289; Cronin, op. cit., ii., 474, 475.
1921.] PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 175
courage among the people such a love of learning that they
will take the initiative and, without constraint, provide for
the education of their children. Should they, through negli-
gence or lack of means, fail to do so, the State has the right
to establish schools and take every other legitimate means
to safeguard its vital interests against the dangers that
result from ignorance. In particular, it has both the right
and the duty to exclude the teaching of doctrines which aim
at the subversion of law and order and, therefore, at the
destruction of the State itself.
The State is competent to do these things because its
essential function is to promote the general welfare. But on
the same principle it is bound to respect and protect the
rights of the citizen and especially of the parent. So long
as these rights are properly exercised, to encroach upon
them is not to further the general welfare, but to put it in
peril. If the function of government is to protect the liberty
of the citizen, and if the aim of education is to prepare the
individual for the rational use of his liberty, the State
cannot rightfully or consistently make education a pretext
for interfering with rights and liberties which the Creator,
not the State, has conferred. Any advantage that might
accrue even from a perfect system of State education would
be more than offset by the wrong which the violation of
parental rights would involve.
In our country, government thus far has wisely refrained
from placing any other than absolutely necessary restric-
tions upon private initiative. The result is seen in the de-
velopment of our resources, the products of inventive genius
and the magnitude of our enterprises. But our most valuable
resources are the minds of our children, and for their de-
velopment at least the same scope should be allowed to in-
dividual effort as is secured to our undertakings in the
material order.
The spirit of our people in general is adverse to State
monopoly, and this for the obvious reason that such an ab-
sorption of control would mean the end of freedom and
initiative. The same consequence is sure to follow when
the State attempts to monopolize education; and the disaster
will be greater inasmuch as it will affect, not simply the
worldly interests of the citizen, but also his spiritual growth
and salvation.
There are other public educational institutions which can
scarcely be called absolutely necessary, and yet which are so
176 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
useful that they may very properly be conducted by the State.
Such are museums, art galleries, libraries, zoological gardens,
scientific bureaus, laboratories and experiment stations. The
services rendered by these agencies contribute much to the
common welfare, and they could not, as a rule, be adequately
carried on by private effort.
Public Charity: The principle that the State should do
only those things which cannot be done as well by private
action, applies with especial force to the field of charity. In
general, this principle rests upon the fundamental truth that
the individual reaches a higher degree of self -development
when he does things for himself, than when the State does
things for him. In the province of charity this fact is illus-
trated with regard both to the receiver and the giver. The
former is more likely to seek unnecessary assistance from the
State than from an individual; the latter is more likely to
infuse his charity with human sympathy than is the State; and
his incentives to charitable action are diminished if the State
does too much. In both cases harm is done to individual de-
velopment.
Nevertheless, the charitable functions of the State are
numerous and important. In the field of prevention, it can and
should use all proper and possible methods to provide that
kind of social environment which renders charitable relief
unnecessary. Under this head comes a large list of industrial,
educational, sanitary and moral provisions, to assure people a
reasonable minimum of the material conditions of living.
Some of these are stated in detail in other paragraphs of this
chapter. In the field of relief, the State is frequently required
to maintain hospitals, asylums, almshouses, and corrective
institutions; to grant subsidies to private institutions and
agencies engaged in these works; and even to provide for
needy persons outside of institutions. Whether and to what
extent the State should undertake any of these tasks, is always
to be determined by the answer which the actual situation gives
to the question: Can the State do the work better, all things
considered, than private agencies? "All things considered,"
refers to remote, as well as immediate, results. For example,
it is conceivable that the State might take care of all dependent
children more cheaply than could private associations, but this
action ought not to be taken if it would lead to a notable de-
1921.] PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 177
cline in charitable feeling, responsibility and initiative among
individuals.
Public Health, Safety, Morals and Religion: The State
should protect its citizens against disease, by sanitary regula-
tions, such as, those relating to quarantine, inoculation, medical
inspection of school children, impure drugs, adulterated food,
and the disposal of garbage. It should safeguard their physical
integrity, by such measures as: traffic rules, safety require-
ments for public conveyances, and building regulations. It
should, as far as possible, provide them with a good moral
environment through the regulation or repression of the liquor
traffic, through the suppression of divorce, prostitution, public
gambling, and indecent pictures, printed matter, theatrical
productions, and places of amusement. Finally, the State is
under obligation to protect and promote religion in all ways
that are lawful and effective. Here we may appropriately
quote the words of Pope Benedict XV. :
Let princes and rulers of the people bear this in mind
and bethink themselves whether it be wise and salutary,
either for public authority or for the nations themselves,
to set aside the holy religion of Jesus Christ, in which that
very authority may find such powerful support and defence.
Let them seriously consider whether it be the part of po-
litical wisdom to exclude from the ordinance of the State
and from public instruction, the teaching <>f the Gospel and
of the Church. Only too well does experience show that
when religion is banished, human authority totters to its
fall. That which happened to the first of our race when he
failed in his duty to God, usually happens to nations as well.
Scarcely had the will in him rebelled against God when the
passions arose in rebellion against the will; and likewise,
when the rulers of the people disdain the authority of God,
the people in turn despise the authority of men. There
remains, it is true, the usual expedient of suppressing re-
bellion by force; but to what effect? Force subdues the
bodies of men, not their souls. 12
All these matters are of vital importance for public wel-
fare, and some of them are even included within the primary
functions of the State, inasmuch as they involve the protection
of natural rights. None of them can be adequately dealt with
by private effort.
"Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi, November 1, 1914.
VOL. CXIII. 12
178 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
Industrial Regulation: Owing to the complexity of modern
industrial conditions, this function of the State is more im-
portant than in any preceding age. Owing to its effect upon
the pecuniary interests of individuals, it has been more
strongly criticized than any other activity of the State. Not
much opposition has been offered to State regulation of banks.
All reasonable men recognize that the public must be protected
through requirements concerning incorporation, minimum of
capital and surplus, liability of stockholders, nature of invest-
ments, amount and kind of reserves, the issuing of notes, and
public inspection and supervision.
The regulation of commerce, public utilities and manu-
factures, has a varied scope and may be exercised in various
ways. Foreign commerce may be regulated through taxes
and embargoes on imports and exports, and by other methods
of restriction. The regulation of domestic commerce takes
many forms: intoxicating liquors, tobacco, explosives, drugs
and other commodities are subjected to a system of licensing,
or special taxation, or other kinds of legal supervision; rail-
roads are forbidden to exact more than certain maximum
charges for carrying goods and passengers, and are compelled
to maintain certain standards of service; and such municipal
utilities as street railways and lighting concerns must submit
to similar requirements. Commercial contracts which are
clearly extortionate, such as loans of money at usurious rates,
are generally prohibited by law. In this matter the policy of
governments is not in accord with the individualistic theory
that all technically "free" contracts ought to be legally en-
forced. As a matter of fact, such contracts are not free in any
fair sense. All the foregoing regulations promote the public
welfare and are evidently among the proper functions of the
State.
The most public important regulation of manufactures is
that which strives to prevent unfair dealing and extortion by
monopolistic corporations. In some form this is a very ancient
practice of the State. Many centuries ago, legislators became
aware that human beings cannot be trusted to exercise
monopoly power with fairness to either competitors or con-
sumers. Today the most enlightened governments have
numerous and complex statutes to prevent and punish both
these forms of injustice. Such measures are clearly justified,
1921.] PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 179
not only to promote the public good, but also as an exercise
of the primary function of the State, namely, the protection of
natural rights. They are intended to prevent and punish
unjust dealing and extortion. Nevertheless, they have not
adequately attained that end.
Additional measures are required, to limit still further the
"individual freedom" of the monopolist to treat his fellows un-
justly. Legal determination of maximum prices, government
regulation of supply and distribution, and State competition in
the manufacturing or other business carried on by a monop-
olistic concern are the principal new methods that have
been suggested. In so far as they are necessary and would
prove adequate to protect the general welfare, they can un-
doubtedly be classed among the proper functions of the State.
Since the main object is to prevent the imposition of extor-
tionate prices upon the consumer and the receipt of excessive
profits and interest by the monopoly, these and all other regu-
latory measures are directed against that "rapacious usury,
which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is
nevertheless under a different guise, but with the like injus-
tice, still practised by covetous and grasping men." 18
Probably the most necessary and beneficent group of in-
dustrial regulations are those which apply to the labor con-
tract and the conditions of labor. The principal subjects
covered are wages, hours of labor, child labor, woman labor,
safety and sanitation in work places, accidents, sickness, old
age and unemployment. As regards wages, legislation has
been enacted regulating the manner and frequency of pay-
ment, and fixing minimum rates of remuneration. Underlying
most of the latter measures is the theory that no wage earner
should be required to accept less than the equivalent of a
decent livelihood. So long as millions of workers are unable
to obtain this decent minimum through their own efforts or
through the benevolence of the employer, they have clearly
the right to call upon the intervention of the State. In other
words, the enactment of minimum wage legislation is among
the State's primary, as well as secondary, functions. Laws pro-
hibiting an excessively long working day, the employment of
young children, the employment of women in occupations un-
suited to their sex, the existence of unsafe and unsanitary work
13 Pope Leo XIII., On the Condition of Labor.
180 PROPER FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE [May,
places are all likewise included among both the primary and
the secondary functions of government. Legal provisions for
insuring the workers against accidents, sickness, unemploy-
ment, invalidity and old age, have been made by various coun-
tries. When necessary, they evidently represent a normal
exercise of, at least, the secondary functions of the State. 14
To the foregoing legal measures for the protection of
labor may pertinently be applied the principle laid down by
Pope Leo XIII: "Whenever the general interest, or any par-
ticular class suffers or is threatened with injury which can in
no other way be met or prevented, it is the duty of the public
authority to intervene." Indeed, the great Pontiff himself applied
the principle quite specifically to the conditions and needs of the
working class. He said : "When there is question of defending
the rights of individuals, the poor and helpless have a claim to
especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of
shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the
State; whereas, those who are badly off have no resources of
their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the
assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-
earners, who are undoubtedly among the weak and necessitous,
should be specially cared for and protected by the govern-
ment." 15
Our discussion of the end and functions of the State may
fittingly close with the following declaration of the great Cath-
olic authority on law, Francisco Suarez :
The object of civil legislation is the natural welfare of the
community and of its individual members: in order that
they may live in peace and justice, with a sufficiency of
those goods that are necessary for physical conservation
and comfort, and with those moral conditions which are
required for private well-being and public prosperity. 16
14 Cf. Social Reconstruction Program of the Four American Bishops. In
Church and Labor (Macmillan). An excellent and fundamental statement of the
economic functions of the State will be found in Institutiones Juris Naturalis, by
Theodore Meyer, S.J., ii., pp. 683-689. Uninstructed persons who think that legisla-
tion for a minimum wage and for social insurance is "Socialistic" will have a better
notion of Catholic social teaching after reading these paragraphs.
"Encyclical On the Condition of Labor.
18 De Legibus, 1. 3, c. 11, sec. 7.
CARDINAL GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS.
BY ALLEN SINCLAIR WILL. 1
ARDINAL GIBBONS' relations to public affairs
had such a wide reach, it seemed to those who
were most closely associated with him in the
height of his activities that there was no limit to
them. Probably no man of the time, churchman
or layman, possessed such extraordinary breadth of thought
and interest and translated this into action. It was literally
true of him, as a bishop who was one of his dearest personal
friends remarked the day after his death, that nothing human
was foreign to him. His mission, as revealed in deeds, was to
all humanity in the truest apostolic sense.
For the purpose of tracing the evolution of the Cardinal's
public relations, I shall endeavor to recall the chief of them
in the order in which they developed, rather than in any
special order based on an estimate of their relative importance
in the long perspective of his life. This aspect of his career
had its beginnings in the Civil War period, when he held his
only pastorate, that of St. Bridget's Church, in Canton, then a
suburb of Baltimore and now a part of that city. In Baltimore,
among a border population, the fiercest passions of that con-
flict had full sway. Not a few Catholic priests, as well as min-
isters of non-Catholic denominations, felt impelled to declare
their stand for one side or the other, some of them in an ag-
gressive way.
Confronted with the necessity of choosing a course of
action while the powerful popular currents were tugging at
his reason and sympathies, the future Cardinal reached a firm
decision and adhered to it. In marked contrast to many of his
later decisions it was, in a sense, a negative one. It seemed to
him that in the welter of strife and stress his duty as a min-
ister of religion was only to diffuse love and mercy. He was
not to be content that his ministrations to even one suffering
soul should be bent from their full purpose by partisanship.
Fort McHenry, a Federal post where Confederate prisoners
1 Author of Life of Cardinal Gibbons. Baltimore : John Murphy Co.
182 GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS [May,
were confined, was near a little church, St. Lawrence's (now
the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel) which Archbishop
Kenrick, a short time after giving Father Gibbons his pastoral
appointment, directed him to serve, in addition to St. Bridget's.
The young priest became a volunteer chaplain at the fort, and
to garrison and captives alike he was at all times the devoted
"ambassador of Christ," ready to alleviate the pangs of war
and lead them to the salvation of the Father of the bond and
the free.
Some years ago, in collecting material for the Cardinal's
biography, I talked with all the surviving persons whom I could
trace who had been in any way associated with him in the
congregations which he served in those earlier years. Not one
of them mentioned, although some recalled vividly their im-
pressions of him at that stage, that he ever appeared to them
in the light of a partisan of one side or the other in the con-
flict that was racking the nation. So far as could be discovered,
they were not even aware whether he wished the union of the
States to be preserved or the Confederacy to maintain an inde-
pendent existence.
It became known later that Father Gibbons had hoped
steadily through the long conflict that the Union would stand
indissoluble, for he had an abiding faith in the future of a
great America that would be a leader in light and progress
among the nations, and that the temporary divisions, however
acute, would fade before the grander outlook for all his fellow
countrymen. He often recalled, after the fuller wisdom of
years had come to him, his course during the troubled time of
his pastorate of congregations divided in sympathy over the
Civil War, and was glad that he had not become a preacher-
partisan when the role seemed attractive to many of all creeds.
There developed in him at that time two very marked
traits which influenced him in all the great affairs of a public
nature with which he was subsequently associated. These
were courage the courage of silence no less than that of
action, the placing of duty before impulse and the desire to
heal rather than divide. He was by nature a builder, a har-
monizer, an optimist. All his inclinations were constructive.
During the later period, comparatively brief, when Father
Gibbons was secretary to Archbishop Sp aiding and assistant
chancellor of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, he was
1921.] GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS 183
out of the current of general public affairs, though his vigorous
patriotism and deep faith in American political institutions
were beginning to be more in evidence. When, however, he
was sent to North Carolina as vicar apostolic in 1868, a new
set of experiences opened before him. These contributed in
marked degree to influence the current of his life work.
At that time his mind and sensibilities were highly absorp-
tive. He was taking in, as one takes a deep breath to bring
the bodily functions to full vigor, the real scope of his future
bent and activities. North Carolina, in the first place, was
then a shattered commonwealth, in which the devastation of
war and the misgovernment of the reconstruction era had com-
bined to impose an appaling burden of woe on the people, and
render their civic and material restoration a task of immediate
need, but great difficulty. In the second place, Bishop Gibbons
was set down in the midst of a State in which there were but
eight hundred Catholics, and where current misunderstand-
ings of the Catholic faith had tended to isolate the influence of
the few priests who labored in the vicariate.
Now, what was the new Bishop to do? Was he to go
ahead and minister as others had ministered, devotedly and
faithfully, but with only a scanty harvest in prospect and the
deadening wall of misunderstanding rising up as a barrier to
the utmost efforts which he might put forth? Here he emerged
at once into a positive role, which he kept to the end of his
nearly eighty-seven years. He would attack the wall, armed
only with the sword of faith and the armor of righteousness.
He would breach it, if he could not overthrow it entirely. The
way to Catholic progress in North Carolina was through the
wall and into the non-Catholic field, where alone there was
hope of winning accessions to the Church in substantial num-
bers, as no Catholic elements were coming into the population
of the State from outside. Like his divine Master, Who healed
the sick and fed the multitude, he would minister to the
material wants of the people with a love as broad as the Chris-
tian faith itself, and at the same time would carry to a hostile
audience the message that he went to North Carolina to give.
In a short time, almost magically it seemed, the Catholic
Bishop of North Carolina became a vivid and pleasing reality
to the mass of those for whom he had previously meant only
a name, perhaps to be scoffed at. With untiring zeal he
184 GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS [May,
traveled up and down the State, preaching and teaching,
founding churches and schools and giving North Carolinians
a view of the Catholic faith which they had never had before.
All the while he entered intimately into the material struggle
of the population, regardless of creed, lending his aid to every
project for the upbuilding of their ruined property and in-
stitutions.
If a city or town, taking new courage, started a project
of civic importance or general benefit, Bishop Gibbons was one
of the foremost to be relied upon to lend the encouragement
of his voice and effort in rallying support. Soon North Caro-
linians found, and they were glad to find, for they are disposed
to be appreciative, that they had among them a young, ag-
gressive, gifted man of the people, an inspiring exemplar, a
sorely needed champion of their interests, whose practical
help and sympathy in any good work were always forthcoming
and whose sweet personality charmed all alike. And he was a
Catholic Bishop!
Catholic and non-Catholic alike hailed him with increas-
ing depth of sincerity wherever he went on his journeys.
Protestants began to acclaim him as a leading citizen of the
State and contributed to the building funds of his new churches
and chapels. Public officials felt honored to receive him on
civic occasions and to accord him the place of honor. Converts
began to multiply, institutions of the Church, including the
Benedictine Order, the Sisters of Mercy, and numerous schools,
to spring up. There was a renaissance in North Carolina. It
was a renaissance in which Christian charity and toleration
began to banish the dark shadow of immemorial prejudice.
Next in Bichmond, to which he was sent as Bishop, he con-
tinued his work begun in North Carolina along much the same
lines and expanded it. For him there was no semi-cloistered
seclusion, but he must be up and doing among his f ellowmen.
Perhaps, he first won his way into the hearts of Virginians
by the character of his sermons, to hear which non-Catholics
soon began to flock. His eloquence in the pulpit was then
developing fast. When he preached in the larger cities of the
State he gauged his hearers with rare perception and, if they
seemed to be largely non-Catholic, won them by expounding
the simple truths of the Gospel in limpid and appealing diction.
As in North Carolina, he preached while on his missionary
1921.] GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS 185
journeys in court houses, town halls and other places of public
assemblage, meeting the leading Protestants, as well as Cath-
olics, in the places which he visited. Often he was the per-
sonal guest of Protestants in the course of these trips, for at
some places there were no Catholics who could entertain him.
At Culpeper the local judge adjourned court that all might
hear Bishop Gibbons' sermon.
Out of the discussions concerning the Catholic faith which
inevitably arose when he was thrown with so many whose
mental picture of it was distorted by gross errors discussions
which throughout his life he carried on in the highest note of
Christian charity and brotherly love was born the sublime
presentation of his creed embodied in The Faith of Our
Fathers, which he wrote in intervals of his busy life during his
incumbency of the See of Richmond.
We have passed now the first stage in the evolution of
Cardinal Gibbons' public relations. His lot being cast in the
early period of his episcopal career among overwhelmingly
non-Catholic populations, his relations perforce had to touch
all men if he was to make progress outside a very restricted
orbit. What became a necessity in North Carolina and Vir-
ginia, he welcomed as an opportunity in the greater activities
which were about to open before him. Cardinal Gibbons was
a true product of the Church. The influences which shaped
his life and work came from within the Church; and for that
reason I have dwelt on his early labors as a priest and bishop
to show the origin of those wider aspects in which he now
appears to men and women everywhere, of all creeds, who
mourn his loss as the passing of a great figure of our age.
In Baltimore, where he became archbishop in 1877, after a
brief period as coadjutor, he began to rise to his full stature.
Here in the primatial See, with the pervading influence left by
Archbishop Carroll, he could obtain a hearing from all Amer-
icans. Already he possessed a fairly extensive acquaintance
among civic officials in Baltimore and, with his marvelous
faculty of remembering names, faces and incidents, he ex-
tended it rapidly. His predecessors in the See had been known
to few Protestants. In a short time he became almost as well
known to Protestants as to Catholics, and beloved by all.
Governor and Mayor were his friends. In his public addresses
he began to speak more of his firmly implanted faith in Amer-
186 GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS [May,
lean institutions and to denounce political evils, such as the
widespread corruption of the ballot which then prevailed.
Though in Baltimore, he knew that he was in an atmos-
phere where there was still a great degree of misunderstand-
ing of the Catholic Church, and one of his chief aims in life
was to remove this. After the lapse of years, when the work of
Cardinal Gibbons has done so much to lessen this misunder-
standing, we can scarcely realize its ominous extent in 1877.
Early in his career at Baltimore, the city celebrated, after
long preparation and with a great outburst of civic display,
its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. He prepared a cir-
cular to the clergy, which he directed to be read at Masses
on a certain day, urging that Catholic organizations take full
part in the public parades and other festivities that marked
the occasion, at the same time exhorting the avoidance of "all
sinful excess" during the period of the celebration. His full
and cordial cooperation remained a treasured memory with
the men who organized that civic event.
When President Garfield was wounded by an assassin's
bullet in 1881, the Archbishop, in a circular letter to the clergy,
expressed his abhorrence of the deed and ordered prayers for
the recovery of the President. After Mr. Garfield's death, he
preached in the Cathedral on a religious subject connected
with the lessons of the event.
In the same year he issued what was perhaps the first
official direction by a Catholic prelate in accordance with the
national observance of Thanksgiving Day.
He had met personally all the then recent Presidents.
Now he and President Cleveland became warm personal
friends. Mr. Cleveland leaned much on his advice, as did
several later Presidents, notably Roosevelt and Taft. In 1892
Mr. Cleveland, a Presbyterian, in a letter to William Black,
had the courage to write: "I know Cardinal Gibbons and know
him to be a good citizen and first-rate American, and that his
kindness of heart and toleration are in striking contrast to the
fierce intolerance and vicious malignity which disgrace some
who claim to be Protestants."
It is fairly well known that Mr. Cleveland consulted Car-
dinal Gibbons on his tariff message in 1888, which revived that
question as a practical issue in American economic and polit-
ical life. On that occasion the Cardinal predicted the course
1921.] GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS 187
of events growing out of the message with an insight that was
scarcely short of prophetic.
Americans will not forget that when the Archbishop of
Baltimore was elevated to the Cardinalate by his warm friend
and admirer, Leo XIIL, in 1886, one of the chief aspects in
which he considered the award of the high station, as shown
in his utterances, was that of an honor to his country; and,
more than that, to his fellow countrymen of all creeds and
classes. In Rome itself he said: "I presume also to thank him
(the Holy Father) in the name of our separated brethren in
America, who, though not sharing our Faith, have shown that
they are not insensible indeed, that they are deeply sensible
of the honor conferred upon our common country, and have
again and again expressed their admiration for the enlightened
statesmanship and apostolic virtues and benevolent character
of the illustrious Pontiff who now sits in the chair of St. Peter."
The non-Catholic newspapers of the country had felt it to
be no particular concern of theirs when the meek and gentle
McGloskey, the only American predecessor of Gibbons in the
Sacred College, had received his elevation. Now they took
the view, and expressed it in editorials from end to end of the
country, that a stanch and gifted defender of the institutions
shared in common by all Americans, a spokesman of the
nation, had been raised up to represent them in the exalted
tribunal composed of the Princes of the Catholic Church.
There was no denying that a part of the distrust in which
the Church had been held in America was due to a belief on
the part of the non-Catholic majority here, that the Roman
Curia frowned upon the constitutional separation of Church
and State in this country as inimical to the progress of re-
ligion. The keen mind of Cardinal Gibbons had analyzed the
causes of this distrust. If it was to stand, his work could not
reach full fruition. Speaking at his installation in his titular
Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in March, 1887,
he proclaimed the marvelous growth of the Church in America
from "a few thousand souls" and one bishop at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, to seventy-five bishops and millions
of communicants. Then he declared:
For this great progress we are indebted, under God and
the fostering vigilance of the Holy See, to the civil liberty
we enjoy in our enlightened Republic. Our Holy Father,
188 GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS [May,
Leo XIII., in his luminous encyclical on the constitution of
Christian States, declares that the Church is not committed
to any form of civil government. She adapts herself to all.
. . . But in the genial atmosphere of liberty she blossoms
like a rose. For myself, as a citizen of the United States,
and without closing my eyes to our shortcomings as a
nation, I say, with a deep sense of pride and gratitude, that
I belong to a country where the civil Government holds
over us the aegis of its protection, without interfering with
us in the legitimate exercise of our sublime mission as min-
isters of the Gospel of Christ. Our country has liberty
without license, and authority without despotism.
The new Cardinal's purpose could not be mistaken, and it
had full effect. He meant to declare a message, in the citadel
of the Church itself, under circumstances which would lend it
the greatest momentum, that the American system, in its prac-
tical bearings, meant protection to the Church, and that, in the
free atmosphere of this country, she could work out her divine
mission without that interference which had so often frustrated
her amid the ancient institutions of Europe. He wished the
ministry of Christ to be divorced entirely from political bonds.
The cry that Rome wishes to interfere with the political insti-
tutions of America has long been silenced.
The new Cardinal was bursting with energy, and next
threw himself with ardor into one of the greatest struggles of
his life, that for the rights of labor. Here again the roots of
his work were in the Church, but the ramifications of it ex-
tended far outside. The agitation which attended the rebirth
of the labor movement in the middle eighties of the last cen-
tury is now fading into the recesses of history, and it may be
well to recall the main facts. Throughout the civilized world
capital was becoming more powerful with the development of
manufacturing, and was beginning to form combinations which
could reduce arbitrarily the wages of thousands or throw those
thousands out of work. Half resentful, half despairing, the
toilers turned to any means of redress in sight. Strikes multi-
plied, and in the United States and Canada there was a herd-
like rush to join the Knights of Labor, which set out with
untrained strength and judgment to right some of the wrongs
that were being done.
In Canada the Church authorities, objecting greatly to the
1921.] GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS 189
secrecy of the proceedings of the Knights, classed them as a
forbidden organization, and in this they were sustained by
the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome. The same pro-
cedure was imminent in the United States when Cardinal Gib-
bons threw himself into the breach.
The Cardinal found that there was nothing in the ritual
of the Knights in conflict with Catholic practice and doctrine.
Sustained at home as to his viewpoint on the labor ques-
tion, regarding which he had also consulted President
Cleveland and conducted a correspondence with Cardinal
Manning, he wrote the famous plea contained in his letter
on the Knights of Labor to the Prefect of the Propaganda
February 28, 1887. I need not recount here the eloquent
power with- which he appealed in behalf of toleration for the
Knights and for the Church's benevolent help to the cause of
the humble and struggling in the ranks of labor. The states-
manship of this paper reached a height which he never sur-
passed, and won every point for which he contended. The
Knights were not only not forbidden in this country, but the
ban was lifted in Canada, and Leo XIII.'s Encyclical on Labor,
which soon followed, permanently placed the Church in the
enlightened position regarding organized labor, which it has
maintained ever since.
Of all the battles waged by the Cardinal, I think, he took
the greatest satisfaction in the one which he carried on, with
such signal success, against foreign nationalism in the Church
in this country. The Cahensly movement in the last decade
and a half of the nineteenth century is still a vivid memory,
and the extent of the Cardinal's victory, for which he was
personally congratulated by President Harrison at the time,
was brought into bold relief later by developments here in the
World War. Basically, the movement was a demand for "na-
tional bishops," that is, that groups of the foreign-born em-
braced within the Catholic population of the United States
should be represented in the episcopate in proportion to their
numbers. Actually, it took the form of an insistent call, backed
by powerful European influences, for the active preservation
by the Church here of the nationality of immigrants and their
recognition as an element within the Church distinct from
other bodies of her people. Had that policy prevailed from
the year 1890 to 1917, we can easily estimate the broad lines
190 GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS [May,
of the effect which it would have had in restricting the devel-
opment and execution of a distinctively American policy in
the War.
Cardinal Gibbons' vision, so often of great value to his
country, was equal to penetrating the dun outlines of possible
future complications growing out of this cause. American to
the core, a patriot in every fibre, he fought under obstacles
that would have appalled a less resolute soul, until the spectre
of the national bishoprics faded before the verdict of Rome
itself. It was a struggle of years, but the Cardinal's victory
was complete in the end.
The Cardinal hoped that the Spanish- American war might
have been averted by the Papal mediation which was formally
offered, and worked to prevent hostilities, but when war was
declared by the constituted authorities, he upheld them
stanchly. In an address at Loyola College, Baltimore, June 13,
1898, while the conflict was in progress, he spoke words that
came out of the depths of his heart.
"We must love our country next to God," he said, "and be
ready to die for it if necessary. We must loyally and firmly
sustain our laws and our governing powers. There was a time,
before the war began, when every citizen had the right to
express his views upon the policy of the nation; but after
Congress has spoken the words that bring us to war, it is our
duty now to work with and for our country, and by prayer for,
and full sympathy with, those in authority, to help bring the
conflict to a speedy and successful conclusion."
It was chiefly due to his direct interposition that the sale
of the Friar lands in the Philippines was arranged later on
terms satisfactory to the Administration at Washington, when
the American Government had used its last resource in a vain
attempt to solve the question. In the adjustment of ecclesias-
tical status in the Philippines, Cuba and Porto Rico under the
new American regime he took an invaluable part. Presidents
Roosevelt and Taft felt bound to him by ties of the deepest
gratitude for his powerful help in these aspects of their own
difficulties.
Cardinal Gibbons was not too old to crown his work for
his country by vigorous support of the Government in the
World War. In the Liberty Loan campaigns, and wherever
else he could help, no soldier could have responded more
1921.] GIBBONS IN HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS 191
loyally to the call of patriotism than he did. His work in or-
ganizing the National Catholic War Council to bring imme-
diately to the service of the Government all the Catholic re-
sources of the country; and the National Catholic Welfare
Council to coordinate all Catholic activities in peace times;
and his encouragement of the Knights of Columbus in their
work for the American soldiers at home and abroad is a fresh
and vivid memory and we need not recount the details here.
With his old friend, ex-President Roosevelt, he joined in a
message of cheer to the troops abroad. His lucid exposition of
the attitude of Benedict XV. in the War was commended with
deep appreciation by the Sovereign Pontiff in the midst of the
cloud of misunderstanding.
What a sight it was to move men when the aged patriot-
prelate of America grasped the hand of the aged patriot-prel-
ate of Belgium in welcoming him, after the sun of peace had
begun to shine, on the mission of thanking America for her
help to the martyr nation, in which help Cardinal Gibbons
had borne such a distinguished part! These two Princes of
the Church embodied, in a large sense that all the world could
perceive, the conception of the Minister of God whose mission
is as wide as the suffering and need of the human race which
their efforts can alleviate. They have shown that the sublime
spirit in which Leo the Great went out to save Rome from
Attila, survives in the leaders of the Church.
Within the compass permitted here it is not possible to do
more than refer to Cardinal Gibbons' utterances on a number
of public questions which arose from time to time in the course
of his long career. Some of these utterances were delivered in
addresses on civic occasions, but most of them were solicited
by leading journals of our land, which came to perceive that his
soundly balanced judgment had become the guide of the great,
voiceless multitude of his fellow countrymen. He was, more
than any other man, in or out of official life, the mentor of the
nation. Whether he spoke upon labor arbitration or consti-
tutional amendments, divorce or Bolshevism, men of all creeds
were eager to listen as to no other voice in their tune.
THOMAS WALSH: HIS SPANISH FANTASIES.
BY HUGH ANTHONY ALLEN, M.A.
T is Zuloaga's unenviable distinction to have
achieved in art what George Borrow accom-
plished in literature. No intelligent person now
considers the author of The Bible in Spain a true
interpreter of that tragic land no more should
they consider Zuloaga a master Spanish painter in the sense
that Sorolla is a master Spanish painter. He is a marvelous
craftsman, of course, but he does not get at his people; he is a
victim of his preperccptions, and forgets the forest on account
of the trees.
All who have been shocked by his blood-stained matadors
and trianeras, his sensuous gitanas, his voluptuous society
women and other superficialities, will fall upon Thomas
Walsh's poems in Spanish settings as a heart-warming dis-
covery. Here, indeed, are interpretations that actually inter-
pret. Thomas Walsh knows Spain the Spain of the Koran,
as well as the Spain of the Gospel, the Spain of gallant Igna-
tius, of sparkling Teresa, of valiant St. John of the Cross.
With dreamy reverence, he sees a sombre, Gothic Spain
swarming with churches full of mystic worshippers, a poetic
land in the full Latin tradition of mediaeval Europe. The
glamour of this Catholic country haunts his heart. That his
efforts to reveal this wonderful Spain, to render its blinding
chromatics and its myriad moods, have been abundantly suc-
cessful is well attested by the fact that he has been made a
member of the Hispanic Society, and by the further fact that
with Salomon de la Selva he was chosen to translate the works
of South America's greatest poet, Ruben Dario.
There is a world of truth in the poem, "To Fray Junipero,"
written for the Bicentenary of Padre Serra, San Francisco,
California, 1713-1913:
You that in Palma paced the cloister paving
And taught the Subtle Doctor in the schools,
Yet left your tranquil isle, the tempests braving,
To face the tomahawks and jeers of fools.
1921 -J THOMAS WALSH 193
Junipero, ha! ha! you wept and shouted
And tore your bosom with a jagged stone
When the poor Indians at your sermons doubted
The clearest things philosophy has shown.
You lashed your shoulders and to blazing torches
Laid bare your breast to make "the brutes" believe;
Junipero, you limped to heaven with scorches,
But took their souls, like scalps, upon your sleeve!
I wonder would you try your syllogisms
From Scotus, if you came unto the tribes
That fill the air with fads and frills and schisms,
Or with your scourge and torches meet their gibes?
You may be certain many would debate you
Among the learned sachems of today,
Though few are likely now to emulate you
And hurt themselves to bring their tribes to pray.
There are still in the world little islands of spirituality,
like Ireland and Brittany and Spain. They help us to under-
stand what life must have meant in that olden time when all
civilization was Catholic. They fill us with a wistful longing
to peer into the past and hold this lovely thing to our hungry
hearts. A shining crystal to aid our vision lies in the poetry
now under consideration. Like the race with which it is con-
cerned, it is sometimes too passionate and willful; like that
race, too, its chief claim to distinction is that, in the main it
is truly Catholic.
These poems of Thomas Walsh possess a subtle ambience
of atmospheric effect which wafts us through time and space
to languorous Andalusia, giving us the things that live in the
paintings of Velazquez and the prose of Aleman and Quevedo.
He has got the clank and clangor of mediaeval hidalgos and
swashbucklers into his lines; he knows the secrets of the pic-
turesque beggars and swarthy water-carriers who throng in the
narrow, tangled streets. His imaginative vision is as clear as
the sunlight that purples the shadows and yellows the ground
there. His pictures are rich and hotly colored. We see bleak,
treeless stretches, punctuated at intervals by craggy promi-
nences crowned with monasteries; fine, old fountains where
women with water jars braced against their hips meet and
VOL. CXIII. 13
194 THOMAS WALSH [May,
gossip; blood-stained bull-rings and blood-stained hermitages
we see changeless Spain in all her aspects, Spain with her
strong savor of mysticism, her romantic fervor and her sub-
tropical lassitude, Spain the land of countless contrasts and
paradoxes, where the cool night air, though too gracious to
blow out a candle, will freeze a sentry in his box. His mellow
evocations suggest all this. They present a remarkable chiaro-
scuro. Surely, "La Preciosa" 1 is racy of the soil:
On the marches of Pamplona, out to sun and wind and star-
Lift the airy spires and turrets of the kings of old Navarre,
Where the endless dirge is chanted o'er their alabaster tombs,
And the canons drowse in scarlet 'mid the incense and the glooms.
Daily came the little goatherd, Mariquita, lithe, brown,
Through the dusty gates to jangle with her flock across the town,
Lounging barefoot through the alleys and the squares at milking
hour,
Calling shrilly round the doorway and the cloister by the tower.
There amid the ancient portal blazoned o'er with angels rare
Sculptured stands La Preciosa crowned upon her dais fair,
Whilst upon her breast The Infant turns with smiling eyes to
look-
On the lesson she is reading in her graceful little book.
There the tousled country urchin used to come and shout in play
"Mary, Mary, neighbor Mary, watch the child while I'm away."
When so read the Chapter annals from the stone would come
reply
With a gentle nod of greeting, "Mariquita, dear, good-bye."
Till the Canon Don Arnaldo, passing when his Mass was o'er,
Heard that banter so unseemly at La Preciosa's door,
Little knowing in his wisdom that the Virgin meek and mild
Answered through the stony image to the greeting of the child.
"When again you pray, Our Lady, cease," he said, "your idle
sport;
Kneel as though the queen or duchess passed you on her way to
court;
Clasp your hands and bend your forehead as more humble words
you say,
Such as 'Heavenly Queen and Empress, House of Gold, to thee
I pray.' "
Mindful of the solemn lesson, Mariquita, half afraid,
Ever as tlpe good old Canon taught her, clasped her hands and
prayred;
1 The Pilffrlin Kings, by Thomas Walsh, p. 97. New York : The Macmlllan Co.
1921.] THOMAS WALSH
195
Bowed in rustic salutation, ended with a long Amen
But in stone the Virgin listened never smiled nor spoke again.
Professor Walsh does not forget that the Crescent long
rivaled the Cross in Spain, and his poems inspired by this
period of her history are full of gorgeous color; they are of
his best. Sparkling with Moorish splendors is his description
of "Morning in Granada." In "Zoraya," 2 we learn of the havoc
played with haremlik by the advent of a friendly stranger,
when Spain was in a period of transition and Catholic and
Moslem, between battles, paused to take stock of each other :
There came by night a northern cavalier
Beneath her terrace when the moon was young,
And she, the fond Sultana, bent to hear
A serenade no Moslem youth had sung.
She stirred but at her lips the Sultan yearned
And half-asleep entwined her fingers tight
Till soon where down the gorge the pathway turned
She heard the horseman pass into the night.
There came by night though moons waxed bleak and old
"No other voice to sing like his again;
The fountains splashed through marbles stained with gold;
Till dawn she heard the nightingale complain.
But day by day adown her mirador
She watched the mountain flocks and herdsmen pass;
Smiling, she fed her parrot o'er and o'er
But ah, who taught it thus to sigh, Alas?
But reactionary in effect was "The River Song:" 3
There came as tribute out of far Bagdad
Unto Alhambra once a minstrel lad
Who all day long touched softly on the strings
The river song the Tigris boatman sings.
A sun-bronzed slave who toiled among the flowers
O'erheard a sob from the Sultana's bowers,
And whispered: "Minstrel, wake that note no more;
She, too, in childhood knew our Asian shore;
"Garden Overseas, by Thomas Walsh, p. 110. New York: John Lane Co.
9 The Pilgrim Kings, p. 46.
196 THOMAS WALSH [May,
Fair is Alhambra but by pool or dome,
Sing here no more that song of youth and home.
5fc
A little thing, a mere trifle, perhaps, yet is it not marvelous
how he gets the perfume of true poesy into such a tiny blos-
som? It is perfection. It haunts me together with such sheer,
exquisite wisps of beauty as Robert Loveman's April Rain,
Father Blunt's To Mary, Lizette Reese's Tears, and other
precious fragments of delight.
Mr. Walsh is not always so dexterous in the use of his
medium, however. Don Folquet, 4 one of his most recent and
most ambitious performances, creaks at the joints. It is a long
poem, far too long for its strength, done in the old romantic
manner. In spite of its colorful background, its vigorous draw-
ing, its brilliant moments, its delicate nuances, the feeling is
persistent that Mr. Walsh is in the position of a builder who
erects a skyscraper and neglects to take down the scaffolding.
The poet gives us many quaint and captivating vistas of
monastic and conventual life, both mediaeval and modern.
"Egidio of Goimbra 1597 A. D.," presents a vivid picture of the
thrilling disputations between scholastic philosophers when
the gentle art of dialectics was in better repute than it is now.
His translation of Sister Gregoria's beautiful and touching
tribute, "To a Bird at Sunset, Seville, 1686," suggests one of the
achievements of the talented nun dramatist, Roswitha. "In the
Cloister of San Juan" is a charming rendition of a curious old
legend, in which a young novice learns the sorrows of the rose.
Without recourse to the printed page, it is possible to re-
construct historic Spain by studying the heroic canvases of such
finished artists as El Greco, Velazquez and Goya. As might be
anticipated, therefore, these old masters have been a rich and
potent inspiration to Thomas Walsh, and they figure individ-
ually in warm appreciations throughout his pages. "Goya in
the Cupola" depicts the deaf, lame, half -blind artist at the turn-
ing point in his career when he was about to change his motto
of "Art for Art's Sake" into "Art for Christ's Sake." No one
will gainsay that there was need for such a change. In his
self-portrait in the costume of a matador, a costume of which
he was inordinately fond, painted for his friend and patron the
Duke of Oswna, is revealed a man essentially macabre, fierce,
4 Don Folquet, and Others, by Thomas Walsh, p. 13. New York: John Lane Co.
1921.] THOMAS WALSH 197
arrogant, self-willed, implacable, intolerant, hideously alive,
full of avid animalism, with a face utterly sensual and malig-
nant. Though naturally independent and aggressively indi-
vidual, he spent the greater part of his career in the syc-
ophantic role of Court Painter. The favorite of Charles IV.
and the frivolous Queen Maria Luisa, he was always a radical
at heart. Of humble origin, his chief and most violent love
affair was with one no more lowly stationed than the Duchess
of Alba. He lived through the Napoleonic period, but during
the drama of a twenty years' war he remained unmoved, philo-
sophically continuing in his old office of Court Painter at the
shoddy Court of Joseph Bonaparte. Later, when Charles re-
turned to the throne, such was his influence that in spite of his
lack of loyalty, he was permitted to go blithely on about the
business of producing pictures, pictures that obsess the imag-
ination by their almost ^Eschylean and Aristophanic genre. A
bizarre creature, to be sure, this Francisco Jose de Goya-y-
Lucientes! Mr. Walsh hints at his protean nature in the fol-
lowing poem, "To Francisco Goya in the Gallery of Madrid:" 5
They fawned upon you, kissed your brawny hands
And laid aside their masks and veils that you
Might paint their ivory pallor, veined with blue,
Their periwigs and jabots and their slight,
Beflowered waistcoats and bejeweled strands,
They laid their scorn aside in their delight.
You dreamed a parchment beauty from the soul
Of Venice, and revealed it deathless there
In spite of deadened eyes' and lips' despair;
Then as illusion's very shadow died,
The brigand that was in you gained control
And with your peasant fist you slew their pride.
That dab of rouge upon a leering hag
Is where you struck your queen; that reeling string
Of rogues and cripples wrongs your Spain, whose king
You set, to mock her anguished, starving lands!
An imbecile upon a bloated nag,
You struck them, Goya, yet they kissed your hands.
"The Maids of Honor" tells how the tactful Velazquez
*Tht Pilgrim Kings, p. 99.
198 THOMAS WALSH [May,
posed difficult Court personages in his studio in the Alcazar,
Madrid, no trifling task, we are led to believe. No painter in
all the history of art more strongly has appealed to artists and
amateurs of his own and succeeding periods than has Velaz-
quez. He was one of the first of the realists, and was as much
an impressionist as Manet. He was, too, a great interpreter,
and while a most serious painter, his work shows the joy
which he found in it. Spiritually clairvoyant, he has secured
in his sitters, expressions and personalities which other artists,
however hard they try, cannot find and so cannot express, and
which we cannot account for. "The Maids of Honor" gives us
a glimpse of his methods, shows us the zest with which he exe-
cuted his commissions and is, in fact, a veritable slice of his
life. The weird figure of the third of the trio I have men-
tioned stalks before us in "Greco Paints His Masterpiece."
Here we almost have the truculent Domenikos Theotokopoulos
in the flesh. The scene is in the Gigarral de Buenavista, To-
ledo, 1588, the character drawing is sharp and incisive, and
the entire picture unforgettable. Surpassing this, however, is
that delightful and enchanting divertissement called "Greco's
Last Judgment." 6
All of these tableaux of Thomas Walsh lend themselves
so well to the requirements of a curtain raiser that one wonders
why they have never seen stage presentation at some one of
our little theatres. Especially is this true of the playlet last
mentioned. Here the scene is laid in a Franciscan Friary,
Santa Maria de la Sisla, in the mountains of Toledo, 1604.
The Father Prior Lupo is discovered in a conference with his
friars concerning the claims of Tristan, a young artist em-
ployed by the house to paint a Francis on La Verna. This
lively youth all but demoralized the brethren with his mis-
chievous pranks, but on account of his indubitable talent, is
suffered to remain until his task is completed. The painting
being finished, he demands two hundred ducats in payment
for his services. The canny friars are loth to part with such
a sum to a mere lad. Thereupon, he threatens to expose their
niggardliness "throughout all Castile." Finally, both sides
agree to refer the matter to the hieratic El Greco, dios de la
pintura of contemporary Spain. Decades before, when he
was a poor and obscure painter, the Franciscans of la Sisla had
The Pilgrim Kings, p. 8.
1921.] THOMAS WALSH 199
snubbed El Greco and left the future wizard of the brush to
struggle along without their powerful patronage. When, by
sheer merit, he rose to his present preeminence, the Fathers
became eager to possess in their Friary a specimen of his
wonderful art, but the master refused to comply with their
wishes, reminding them of their failure to appreciate his early
efforts. He compromised, however, by sending them his favor-
ite pupil, Luis Tristan, whose work the Fathers are now trying
to get at a bargain. Even as the Friars are chatting, El Greco
slowly approaches la Sisla in the monastery carriage.
Hastily, the Prior dispatches one of the friars to get out
the royal plate and tapestries that they may make a good
showing before their guest. Others help the feeble artist to
a chair and arrange cushions around him. At length they
confront young Tristan with El Greco. The terrified boy re-
counts his experiences in the establishment, candidly admit-
ting his pranks; his patron listens in grim silence, sternly
censorious, to all appearances. The friars, elated at the way
things seem to be going, hasten the sardonically humorous
denouement:
Greco: ... let me see his picture So, ha! ha!
You scamp, you ask two hundred ducats, eh?
My stick! My crutch! Nay, let me at him there!
Tristan: Mercy, have mercy!
Greco: Let him not escape
Hold him, Pomponio! Bring him here to me.
Now let me see the work again My Luis !
You painted this this rapture of the heavens-
Francis with Christ's own wounds of hands and feet,
The winged Crucifixion in his eyes!
You painted this and yet, you little knave,
You would disgrace our craft and steal the bread
From honest mouths !
Prior Lupo: Nay, Master, strike him not!
The boy is young we wish him well-
Fray Pomponio: Next time he may know better-
Fray Leandro: You forget
He would submit the judgment to your word.
Prior Lupo: Come, the poor lad's in tears!
200 THOMAS WALSH [May,
Fray Caetano: Which shows at least
There is some good in him.
Greco: He has brought shame
Upon my school and me! To rob the poor!
Fray Pomponio: He's but a novice-
Greco: Novice, do you say?
In faith he is ! to spoil an artist's price
And ask a mere two hundred ducats, when
His work is worth five hundred! Come, you scamp,
Five hundred ducats is your price, you hear,
And not a maravedi less, or back
To town Saint Francis goes with us at once!
Roll up the canvas
Prior Lupo: Don Domenico!
Fray Pomponio: He'll make us laughing-stocks! I told you
so.
There's not a convent in Toledo where
I'll show my face this many a day to come !
Fray Isidro: Lose not a moment, Father Prior, pay
The ducats down at once.
Greco: The Brother knows
A bargain; I commend your sense, Isidro.
Be sure not all la Sisla's eminence
Will match through future ages with the fame
My little Luis Tristan's prentice work
Will bring your house.
Prior Lupo: We'll close this business;
Let Brother-Bursar fetch the gold.
Tristan: Your hand,
Maestro, blesses when it strikes! I kneel
To kiss it-
Greco: Nay, my Luisito, come
To my embrace! my blessing and my pride!
Thus the poet is at home "In Old Toledo," where
by night
Greco's visions, ghosts of blight,
Pace your alleys to the stars.
1921.] THOMAS WALSH
201
"Sunset Balconies" is a graceful lyric recalling treasured
memories of Barcelona, Saragossa and Granada, "Sevillana"
is a passionately beautiful tribute, and "The Cathedral,
Burgos, 1905," is full of a mystical exaltation which catches
one up with the wind of impetuous movement in the devout
throng of worshippers at a midnight Mass. Though Spain is
his passion, he senses the romance of other lands also, espe-
cially when they have something in common with his first
love. His poems about them are frequently distinguished. Of
such are his "Road Songs from the Armenian." In "The
Levantine," with a few deft strokes, he draws a portrait of a
swarthy vendor of laces that few throughout our countryside
will fail to recognize. His predilection leads him far afield,
into the remote past, as well as into the tense, restless present.
Following along the trail blazed by Longfellow, he has delved
into the musty pages of Spanish literature and brought to light
many a forgotten, beauteous thing that we would probably
never otherwise have had the opportunity of enjoying. The
prerequisites of such a task are infinite patience and a scholar-
ship of the first order.
That Mr. Walsh has both, is amply proved by the felicitous
translations of representative Spanish poetry occurring in his
books and lately made the subject of an interesting and ex-
tremely valuable anthology. 7 In the preface to this thought-
provoking compilation, the poet observes : "Spanish poetry, at
first glance, would seem to be an unknown world to readers
without a knowledge of Castilian; nevertheless, a study of the
contents of this volume will show that some of the greatest
poets of England and America have presented in our common
English tongue the beauties of this exotic literature. While
their achievement of the past may be a matter of legitimate
pride to the northern Hispanist, the present would seem to be
an opportune moment to strengthen whatever claim he may
have upon the regard of his brothers of Hispanic speech by
presenting a summary, in chronological order, of the transla-
tions by northern Hispanophiles of Spanish poems into Eng-
lish verse. The present work is such a summary, and it is
offered as a spontaneous tribute of affectionate admiration to
the contemporaneous Spanish poet from his English-speaking
brethren of the North."
''Hispanic Anthology, by Thomas Walsh. New York: G. P.. Putnam's Sons.
202 HER NAME [May,
Mr. Walsh then proceeds to marshal a bewildering array
of poets, old and young, to vindicate Spanish culture, and the
roster goes all the way back to the twelfth century. To my
mind, however, the most arresting feature of this significant
volume is the splendid showing made by the singers of Spanish
America. Their work substantiates the seemingly extravagant
claims made for them a few years ago by Dr. Foerster in his
ponderous tome on the literary history of that vast continent
to the South of which we in the United States are so appal-
lingly ignorant. The anthologist has placed us doubly in his
debt by appending many helpful notes and providing portraits
of all the poets represented in his offering.
HER NAME.
BY EDWARD F. GARESCHE, S..T.
WHEN all the springs of song are still,
And silent every lute is flung,
When on the dark Parnassan hill
The useless harps are idly hung,
When poetry hath fled the earth
To heaven where she took her flame
Then fiery song shall come to birth
At mention of the Virgin's name.
That name of Mary, moving sweet,
The springs of song can start again,
Set the dry rivers flowing fleet
With tuneful praise and glad refrain.
Though poetry were still and dead,
This name would stir the dust of death,
Loose of spent song the fountain head
And give the stones melodious breath.
THE ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM.
BY JAMES LOUIS SMALL.
ISBON, Portugal, Sunday Night, May 4, 1919. It
has all happened because of a bull-fight. In our
case, certainly, judgment has alighted with the
proverbial feet of iron, though it has been far
from possessing wings of lead! I daresay, though,
that we are properly punished for choosing to go to a bull-
fight rather than to be saying our prayers, like well conducted
Christians, in the Cathedral.
The Britannia left Ponta Delgada, its last port of call in
the Azores, on Thursday night. On Friday we fell to discuss-
ing Lisbon, which, the Captain told us, we were to reach on
Sunday. Senor Fernandez, our Spanish friend, in recounting
the glories of that famous city (I didn't know anything about
it except that there had been an earthquake there once) sug-
gested the bull-fight. This, it appears, is the weekly social
event of the Portuguese metropolis.
"Capital!" quoth we in happy chorus. "Captain Videlle
assures us that we shall dock by nine o'clock. That will give
us time for the Cathedral in the morning and the bull-fight in
the afternoon. At this point Simpson rose to inquire if it
would be seemly for eight welfare workers to attend a Sunday
bull-fight. No one ever pays any attention to Simpson. He is
semi-New Hampshire, and his young life has been blighted by
a New England conscience that constantly and consistently
"wobbles on the spur of the moment." His objection was
promptly overruled. It was decided that we go to the bull-
fight.
As luck would have it we were some hours late, so when
we went ashore at one in the afternoon the bull-fight was all
that was left us. For Woolley, McNaughton and myself that
fight spelled nemesis. I shall shudder for years to come when-
ever it is mentioned, though not over the bull-fight itself,
which was comparatively painless. It seems that in Portugal
the bull has certain rights denied him in less favored climes.
The performers are not allowed to kill him; they simply chase
204 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
him around for awhile. After they have engaged in this
pleasing sport for fifteen or twenty minutes, during which time
he is punctured with several barbed arrows, a number of
steers horn into the game and run him out of the arena. There
are eight rounds of this, and after each round the audience
claps wildly. At the end everybody goes away happy.
We went out happy, but did not long remain so. Upon
leaving the ship our party had become separated. Woolley,
McNaughton and I were in one group; the rest had placed
themselves under the guidance of Seiior Fernandez. When
they went into the bull-fight they left orders for their taxi to
wait outside. We were not so wise.
Upon emerging from the great arena we found the plaza
black with people, and very nearly destitute of available
vehicles. An evil-looking individual in charge of an ancient
horse and broken-down barouche slouched up to us, touched
his hat and solicited patronage, in what was assumed to be
English. His demands were modest he only asked the trifling
sum of five American dollars to convey us to the Avenida
Hotel, eight blocks away, where, presumably, our fellow secre-
taries were waiting for us.
We gazed despairingly at the sinking sun and recalled
the Captain's admonition to be on board at seven; he could
wait no longer on account of the tide. Woolley looked at his
watch. It was quarter after six. We squeezed ourselves into
the chariot, "shoo-ed" away Lisbon's uncleansed youth, who
clung to us affectionately, mouthing the solitary Anglo-Saxon
word of their vocabulary, "money," and bade our man drive on.
At the hotel we dismissed the barouche and went inside,
only to learn from the clerk at the desk that our friends had
gone on to the ship. By this time it was 6:35. We hurried
out upon the square. There was not a cab in sight; nothing
but the evening crowd sauntering leisurely by, with side
glances of curiosity at these wild-eyed, distraught Americans,
with the strange, cryptic lettering on their caps and the col-
lars of their uniforms.
It was maddening. Time was passing. There was nothing
left for us but to walk the two miles, through tortuous streets
with pavements still scorching from the day's heat and the
buildings on either side emitting blasts, as from a furnace.
The moments sped on, and when Woolley sang out "Six fifty-
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 205
eight" we heightened our pace to a dog trot. We were still
some distance from the dock when a shrill, frenzied whistle
tore the air. We flung ourselves, panting, into the fenced en-
closure by the river, expecting to be greeted with cries of
"There they are!" "Hurry up!" and the like. Instead, there
was silence, profound, undisturbed.
The waters of the Tejo were flowing calmly to the sea,
flecked here and there with the crimson light of a buoy or the
barely distinguishable outline of a sail. Overhead, stars were
beginning to come out one by one, and in the west the sky was
suffused with saffron and orange, tokens of the dying day.
In the centre of the river, moving steadily, surely down-
stream, hospitably alight from stem to stern, was the Bri-
tannia.
It seemed incredible. No one spoke. What was there to
say? Presently our attention was attracted by voices to our
left. They proved to be those of four or five fishermen, who
were smoking their pipes in the shadow of a long, low ware-
house and resting from the day's catch. One of them spoke
English. "Is there," we inquired eagerly, "a motor boat that
would take us out to the ship?" The answer was dishearten-
ing, to say the least. No, indeed. Did we not know that
Lisbon was in a state of revolution? There was no motor boat
and no gasoline to be had if there were one. Only yesterday
the rioters had burned the customs house and a hospital, and
at this moment several thousand soldiers were patrolling the
streets. The tram cars were tied up and the water mains had
been severed.
We turned about. The ship was so far away now that a
rowboat could never overtake it. The Britannia, with all our
hopes, in the tangible shape of comrades, baggage and bodily
sustenance, had, quite literally, gone a-glimmering. It showed,
the barest speck of light, on the horizon. The only other vessel
within a hundred miles of us, for all we knew to the contrary,
was a weather-beaten craft moored farther down the dock.
Peering through the gloom, we managed to read her name:
"Skaarsvold, Stockholm, Sweden." Of what use, pray, could
she possibly be to us?
We walked away. It seemed indecent to expose our
friendlessness to the gaze of an interested, but callous public.
Woolley assumed command. This was an adroit move on
206 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
his part, as it put McNaughton and myself in the wrong, with-
out our exactly knowing why.
He began with me: "How much money have you?"
Now it chanced that I had been furtively taking inventory,
so I was ready for the question. "Twenty cents," I replied with
artless candor.
"Where is the rest of it?"
"In American Express Company checks in my steamer
trunk."
"That's a hell of a place for it!" and he turned his back on
me unfeelingly and proceeded to cross-examine McNaughton.
I registered pained surprise at such coarse language from
a welfare worker on Sunday, too; but Woolley would not be
diverted from the business in hand.
It developed that my companions had two hundred dollars
between them, enough, we hoped fervently, to see us through
to Paris. Fortunately, we all had our passports with us.
"Now," said Woolley, "that's settled. I'll act as treasurer.
You speak French (this to me), so you can be interpreter."
He appraised McNaughton thoughtfully. "Mac," he remarked,
"you're always poking around in churches. You do the
praying."
Personally, I am of the opinion that we shall require a
good deal of praying before we are through.
Monday, May 5th. In normal times the Avenida Palace
Hotel may be all that our good Seiior Fernandez claims for it.
At present its grandeur is visible to the naked eye in descrip-
tive circulars only, and in the size of the bills presented.
Owing to the revolution it is minus electricity, minus water,
minus nearly everything. We presented ourselves at the desk
at 9:30 last evening, footsore, heartsore, jaded, after our walk
up from the dock. An unlighted waterfront in the wretched
suburb of Alcantara, with dogs barking from dark and sinister
looking interiors, was not calculated to cheer.
When Seiior Fernandez came down, in answer to the hotel
clerk's summons, he, quite naturally, looked surprised.
"Why," said he, "I thought the boat had gone."
"It has," said I, endeavoring to appear casual, "but we
are not on it."
"So I perceive."
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 207
Explanations were in order. The Sefior laughed. "There
is nothing for you to do but remain here overnight. I will
make the best arrangement I can, and in the morning we shall
see what is to be done."
We were ushered to a room with a double bed in one
corner and a trundle arrangement in the other. The latter fell
to my lot. Sefior Fernandez assured us that it was "comme il
faut" for one to leave one's shoes outside the door for noc-
turnal polishing. I demurred. Suppose they should be stolen ?
Eventually, however, I rose to the occasion. When one is
already penniless (save for twenty cents) and is destitute of
handkerchief or hairbrush, why make a fuss over a pair of
shoes?
This morning, such a morning as only these southern
shores may know, with turquoise sky, floods of golden sun-
shine, and a breeze blowing in from the sea, found us hopeful.
I spent my twenty cents for breakfast, and Woolley parted
reluctantly with twelve dollars for our night's accommodation.
At nine o'clock we had our conference with Sefior Fer-
nandez. We told him how much money, or rather how little,
we had. How were we to make Paris? Inquiry revealed the
fact that there is not another boat out for three weeks. Only
one course lies open to us we must go by rail: Lisbon to
Madrid; Madrid to Hendaye; Hendaye to Paris. There are but
three trains a week that make the connection, one each on
Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. First we must call on the
American consul to find out what is necessary for an exit from
the country; then to Cook's to procure tickets.
"The Van Deusens!" I exclaimed. "Luck is with us!"
"Where do you get that stuff?" asked Woolley, lapsing
into army vernacular. "Have you gone off your head?"
"Not at all," I insisted, "don't you remember Mrs. Van
Deusen, who came over with us on the Britannia, the wife of
the American military attache at Madrid? Her husband was
to meet her at Lisbon. Here they are now."
Sure enough, the Van Deusens were coming down to
breakfast. Presentations followed. The military attache and
his lady are taking the Wednesday train. Obviously, that is
the time for us to go.
Woolley and Mac left the hotel before me. On the corner
of the square, I overtook them, hemmed in by an excited, ges-
208 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
ticulating crowd. I elbowed my way through the wriggling
mass of humanity, with Woolley's red hair as a guiding light.
He was drawn up to his full six feet, bristling with indigna-
tion, and Mac was striving to quiet him. In front of them an
aged Portuguese fish peddler hopped up and down like an en-
raged toad. His toothless gums worked wildly and from them
proceeded squawks of protest. He had been walking along,
peaceably enough, with an enormous basket of fish suspended
from either end of a bamboo pole balanced neatly upon his
head, when, in some way, it swung around and caught Woolley
squarely upon the jaw. I had visions of all three of us lan-
guishing in a Lisbon prison, so hastened to second Mac's efforts.
After further parley, which included a small cash settlement,
we succeeded in pacifying both Woolley and the offending fish
merchant and went our way in peace.
It is astonishing that I should have to miss a boat in
Lisbon, Portugal, to bring me to a realizing sense of my Amer-
ican citizenship. I am quite sure that never before have I set
a proper value upon it. No sight ever gladdened my eyes as
did that of the Stars and Stripes floating above the door of the
Consulate, and if there is anything that Mr. Douglas, the
consul, has left undone in our case I cannot imagine what it is.
Our passports must have the visa of the French, Spanish
and Portuguese consuls before we can leave the country, and
he gave us letters to each. We visited the French and the
Spanish consulates this afternoon, and they attended to us
with neatness and dispatch.
Mr. Douglas has also secured rooms for us at his hotel, the
Internacional. It is a pleasant little place on the corner of the
Plaza Pedro IV., which is the centre around which the business
and social life of Lisbon revolves. There is a statue of the
estimable Pedro in the plaza, besides a fountain or two and all
manner of luxurious foliage. On the opposite side of the
square from us is the great Theatre, Maria II., while shops and
cafes line it on the east and west. The plaza is paved in zigzag
strips of white and terra cotta marble that produce a weird
effect of uncertainty as to one's sanity or sobriety. I do not
wonder that the English sailors call it the "roly-poly."
The Hotel Internacional is much less expensive and vastly
more simple than the Avenida. We three sit at a table by our-
selves and at a table adjoining are the consul and a couple of
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 209
young fellows connected with the United States Naval Office
It is all very novel to our American eyes. The hotel clerk is
elderly and as distinguished looking as a judge, and sits be-
hind a shiny desk with all sorts of brass trimmings. Jose, the
"buttons," is fat and rosy-cheeked, not a day over ten years
old. He wears braided trousers, tightly buttoned coat, and a
bright red cap cocked to one side and held in place by a strip
under the chin, like a regular soldier, if you please.
I am tasting the blessings of detachment, with someone
else to do the worrying! Elijah fed by the ravens has, as Mac
would say, "Nothing on me." Am I ready for breakfast or do
I require a shave? I call upon Woolley, and Woolley pays.
Financial operations at luncheon and dinner are a bit more
involved. As our tickets to Paris have cost $53.00 each (with-
out sleeper, for we cannot indulge ourselves), our balance is
steadily diminishing. Before each meal, therefore, Woolley
makes a statement of cash in hand, and we decide upon the
amount to be spent. I fancy we might give even expert econ-
omists some valuable suggestions.
As I write, an interesting scene unfolds itself beneath my
window, and I pinch myself occasionally to make sure that I
am really here. Daylight is fading rapidly and the street
lamps are beginning to shine about the plaza and before the
cafes. Laughing voices float upward through the soft evening
air, with now and again a strain of music. Through and
under it all there sounds a grim note the chatter of cavalry on
the cobblestones of the narrow streets opening into the square.
But it takes more than a revolution to quench Lisbon's gayety.
As nearly as I can find out, the Portuguese simply must have
have a revolution every few weeks, if only for the sake of their
health.
All in all, "It's a gay life if you don't weaken," as they say
back home. We haven't weakened yet.
Tuesday Evening, May 6th. Our preparations for de-
parture are at last complete. The chief difficulty has been with
the Portuguese authorities, who exhibited a touching reluc-
tance to let us go. They demanded $16.00 in American money,
to be placed in revenue stamps upon our passports, before they
would consent to a visa. What with the imprimatur of the
various consulates, French, Spanish and Portuguese, these
VOL. CXIII. 14
210 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
give an impression of having broken out with some new and
startling variety of rash.
Formalities were concluded by ten this morning, so the
rest of the day has been free for sightseeing. We particularly
wished to visit St. Jeronymos and the Tower of Belem, the ex-
quisite outlines of which we viewed from a distance as we
came up the Tejo on Sunday. This treat has been denied us,
as the street cars are not running and we could not afford a
taxi, so we have contented ourselves with the places of interest
that lie closer at hand.
I doubt if there is a city in the world, certainly not in the
Occident, that flaunts more glaring contrasts in the traveler's
face. Lisbon is at one and the same time lovely and sordid;
fascinating and repulsive; clean and filthy; religious and god-
less. One dodges a high powered motor car, the elegance of
which is scarcely paralleled in New York, to feel a beggar
dragging at one's coat. Yet idlers are relatively few. Most
people seem to be doing something, from the pushcart mer-
chants on the sunny side of the square to the handsome, dark-
eyed fisher women who cry their wares in the streets.
Many of the fine old churches have either been closed or
diverted to secular uses by the new Government, which mem-
bers of the former regime, with some show of reason, declare
to be both irreligious and tyrannical. Of those that remain
open, I like Santo Domingo the best. It is but a step off the
Plaza Pedro IV. and just back of the Theatre, Maria II. In its
shadow are all sorts of queer little shops and only a stone's
throw away is the great market. Once inside its portals, you
are back in the centuries of Faith. There, in the spacious
interior, with gorgeous saints looking down from the midst
of carvings black with age, you are breathing an atmosphere
in which present and past mingle curiously. In musty corners,
crouched close to altar railings, dark-skinned, withered old
women tell their beads, while near by gold braided officers
and modishly gowned ladies kneel at their prayers.
A Portuguese funeral, I take it, is an affair of some import.
Woolley and I saw one this afternoon. We were on our way
from the Archaeological Museum, formerly the ancient church
of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and a relic of the earthquake of
1755, which crowns the height above the plaza. As we were
resting in the shade of some trees on a tiny square at the foot
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 211
of the hill, the funeral procession passed. First came the
hearse, drawn by six black mules, richly caparisoned, and
driven by a man in mourning livery, including knee breeches
and cocked hat. The hearse was of polished ebony, shaped
like a pyramid and hung about with clusters of wisteria and
purple satin ribbon. Immediately following it were several
carriages filled to overflowing with charming children, then a
line of equipages with the grown-ups.
Thus far we have not availed ourselves of the elevators
that facilitate travel between the numerous hills upon which
Lisbon is built. We have looked longingly at them, but did
not know the amount of the fare. Truly, our poverty is an
increasing source of inconvenience, not to say discomfort.
Mac is a bit inclined to grumble. "I never thought,*' he ob-
served ruefully, "that I should be too poor to ride in an
elevator!"
Thursday, May 8th, 9:00 A. M., En Route. Our plans
nearly miscarried at the last moment, and for a time it looked
as if we should not get away on the Wednesday train. Yester-
day noon we were accosted in the lobby of the hotel by an
elderly gentleman who introduced himself as Captain Bailey,
the United States Naval Attache. He asked us who we were
and where we were going. We recited our experiences,
colored with a pardonable pride at our cleverness in sur-
mounting obstacles.
"You cannot go through Spain, that is, as you are now,"
commented the Captain. "Spain is neutral, and no representa-
tives of the warring nations are permitted to cross the country
in uniform. You will be obliged to change to civilian clothes."
"Civilian clothes, indeed, when Woolley's morning report
had shown a cash balance of $24.10! I protested. "We have
just enough to see us to Paris. Why, we couldn't buy so much
as a bathing-suit."
"Well, then, come up to my office and we will talk it over."
The entire staff considered our case. Young Armstrong,
vice-naval attache at Madrid, had been visiting Lisbon and
was to return on the train for which we had purchased tickets.
He was of the opinion that we could "get by" by removing our
insignia and substituting civilian for military headgear. If
questioned at the frontier, we were to give our occupation as
212 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
that of "missionaries." Also, Woolley and I were bidden to
remove the films from our pocket kodaks, as it might go hard
with us if we were caught snapping any "castles in Spain."
Immediately after luncheon we paid a visit to the shops on
the east side of the plaza. For a dollar we bought a large,
round wicker basket such as the Portuguese women carry to
market, and for sixty cents each, three soft caps. Woolley,
with an eye to color harmony, chose light brown, to go with
his red hair. Mac, who never cares how he looks, selected a
nondescript "pepper-and-salt." My cap is gray, lined with
bright green.
We burst into peals of laughter as we surveyed ourselves
and one another in the long mirror. Woolley, in brown cap
and puttees of the same shade, resembled nothing so much as
a portly landlord about to eject a tenant the type that used
to figure in "The Colleen Bawn" and other domestic dramas.
He and Mac declared that I looked like a "regular" missionary
and ought to begin my studies as soon as I return home, if I
am ever so fortunate as to reach that happy haven.
On our way back to the hotel we lay in a stock of fruit
and pastry. Meals in the dining-car, the "wagon-restaurant"
they call it over here, are, of course, out of the question for us.
The train was to leave at 3:30, and at three o'clock we
fared forth. A group of interested spectators stood in the
doorway of the Internacional and watched us go, waving their
hands and calling out farewells as long as we were in sight.
I took first turn in carrying the basket, at the bottom of which,
overlaid with layers of lunch, were our military caps and
insignia. Young Armstrong and the Van Deusens were at the
station, and had already deposited their wraps and hand lug-
gage in the "wagon-lit."
I confess that as the train pulled out, amid clamorous
adieus shouted by excited Portuguese upon the platform, a
feeling of regret mingled with one of relief at our escape.
After all, Lisbon had not been half bad, and in all probability
I should never see it again. Never again should I stand in the
dusky nave of Santo Domingo or stroll with the carefree
throng on the Avenida Liberdade. I leaned back and closed
my eyes. In fancy I saw the old city as at first, from the river :
in the foreground, fishing sails of blue and yellow and rust-
red; beyond them, buildings of white stone rising, tier upon
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 213
tier, against the sunny May sky; and high above all, the towers
of the Cathedral and the solid mass of the royal palace.
In an hour we shall be in Madrid. Thanks to our friends
in the "wagon-lit" who sent in blankets and steamer rugs to us,
we have passed a comfortable night. There was no trouble at
the frontier, although when the guard came through to collect
the tickets, I overheard a whispered inquiry as to why these
Americans were traveling in uniform. I made myself as
inconspicuous as possible behind the convenient bulwark of
Woolley's two hundred pounds.
The embassy car is to meet Armstrong, and he will take
charge of us during our twelve hours' stay in Madrid.
Friday Morning, May 9th. We are due at Hendaye, on the
French border, at noon.
True to his word, Armstrong placed us under his protec-
tion during our stay in Madrid, and, all things considered, we
had quite a wonderful time. He and four other fellows con-
nected with the embassy, have an apartment in a quiet street
just off the Avenue Castellana. Bath, breakfast and an oppor-
tunity to lounge for an hour in the sunny library were most
welcome. Our pleasure at chatting with our hosts was
equaled only by their delight in meeting someone from the
States.
After an hour's rest, Armstrong loaded us into a cab and
drove us to the American consulate, where our passports must
needs be looked after. Our story told, the consul had difficulty
in finding words to express his astonishment. No Americans
in khaki, he said, were going through Spain. We assured him
that we were, and that having come thus far we had no inten-
tion of retracing our steps. In half an hour we were in the
street, with another visa upon our passports.
Woolley and Mac, disposed to be cautious, wished to retire
to the apartment for the balance of the day. Suppose we
should be arrested? I demurred. Stay within four walls,
with the opportunity of a lifetime beckoning outside? Submit
to banishment, with Madrid, the city of romance and song,
lying just beyond the threshold? Never.
Street life in Madrid is much as it is in Lisbon, but cleaner
and a bit more modern. Many of the women wear the tra-
ditional lace mantilla, and there are the usual number of dogs
214 ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM [May,
and donkeys. On our way to the Prado, which is to Madrid
what the Louvre is to Paris, we saw a handsome cavalier
carrying on a lively flirtation with his Juliet, who waved her
fan, in return, from her station in the balcony overhead. This,
we were told later, is an accepted social convention. After a
number of such visits the lover obtains permission to call upon
the senorita, in her mother's presence. They tell an amusing
story at the embassy of a youthful member of the staff, just out
from the States and unversed, consequently, in local usage.
He became smitten with a Spanish maiden and requested,
and was granted, leave to escort her to the opera. When he
called for her, in a carriage designed for two, he found the
lady, her parents, and her two sisters, all waiting to go with
him!
To me the Prado will always be as a dream in which cer-
tain details stand out vividly against a blurred background.
Rows upon rows of originals that in my wildest flights of
fancy I had never hoped to see: the cherubs and ethereal
Madonnas of Murillo; the eloquent contrasts of Velasquez; the
colorings of Titian and Tintoretto and Rembrandt; and, to me,
most striking of all, the ghostly paleness oi* Ribera's hermit-
saints they are all here.
More remarkable even than these works of the masters is
the study of them by the people, for whom the Prado is main-
tained. As I watched them come and go I pondered over
cursory and unthinking comment of past days. I thought of
the difficulty we in America experience in raising the level of
artistic interest and of our easy, off-hand allusions to the
"ignorance" supposed to prevail in Latin countries. Then I
looked at the panorama passing before me. In front of the
masterpieces, absorbed in them, drinking in their beauty of
form and delicacy of coloring, were not only those of the well-
to-do class. Beside them stood the woman of the poor, shawl
drawn over her head, her child's hand clasped in her own,
admiring, explaining. It led me back to the old, old question :
In what does education really consist? If it be lacking in the
gossamer-like, yet all pervasive, quality of appreciation, is it
really education? If, on the contrary, the faculty of apprecia-
tion be unwedded to literal knowledge, can its possessor be
said to be wholly ignorant?
The trees that border the Avenue Castellana were casting
1921.] ADVENTURES OF AN UNWILLING PILGRIM 215
long shadows across that busy thoroughfare as we stepped out
from the Prado. An unbroken procession of motor cars and
smart victorias swept down the Avenue. It differs from
Lisbon's Avenida Liberdade in that it boasts fewer apartment
buildings and more large private residences. Before some of
these the wrought-iron gates were thrown wide open, showing
delicious vistas of walled gardens and gleaming statues, half
hidden in shrubbery. At the entrances liveried servants
awaited their master's return.
Armstrong accompanied us to the station and remained
with us to the last. At ten o'clock the wheels of the Paris
special began to move; our friend of the embassy grasped our
hands in cordial adieu, and we were projected into the night.
We wakened this morning in the foothills of the Pyrenees,
and have climbed steadily higher and higher. At times we
have actually been in the clouds. Had the window been open
I might almost have touched them. Viewed in this way, the
country has a curious effect upon one. It fascinates as would
a beautiful sleeping woman come upon by chance. One
scarcely dares speak lest one awaken it.
The little towns in the lower stretches show almost no
signs of life; they stand, silent, in the midst of verdant pas-
tures. The aged houses crowd close to one another, as if for
mutual protection; and the majestic, red-tiled churches look
like sentinels, with the scars of many years' vigil graven on
their faces. Occasionally the train stops for a moment at a
wayside station, and a momentary diversion is created. Then
it moves on again towards France.
We have been a bit apprehensive since discovering the
presence on board of two Spanish officers, who leave their
compartment at each station and walk up and down on the
platform. They are in scarlet uniform, with broad-brimmed
hats and long cloaks, like those worn by the bandits in one of
the more sanguinary operas. These, with their fierce, up-
turned mustaches, invest them with an air that is decidedly
awe inspiring. We should much like to know whether they
are on a tour of inspection, or simply out for pleasure. It
might make all the difference in the world to us!
Saturday, May 10th. We have passed the Gare d'Auster-
litz and a few moments will bring us to the Quai d'Orsay.
216 THE CALL [May,
Our fellow travelers are gathering up wraps and parcels, and
with insignia restored to its rightful place, we are ready to
resume our status as members of the A. E. F.
We were left unmolested at Hendaye, in spite of Colonel
Van Deusen's predictions. He told us that the American mili-
tary police keep a sharp lookout for stragglers at these border
posts, and are arresting a great many Yanks who have surrep-
titiously caught glimpses of Spain. "You need not worry,
however," he added consolingly, "for if they intern you it will
be at Biarritz, which, otherwise, you might have no opportunity
of seeing."
The French country has grown more beautiful to our eyes
as we have neared Paris: the villages, in setting of plowed
fields, with here and there a stooped figure, like one of Millet's,
passing up and down the furrows; and the spires of the little
churches, each with the inevitable weather-cock, pointing
heavenward with an implication of brisk piety. It all be-
speaks thrift and industry and readiness to labor; far removed,
one feels, from the dreamy languor of Spain.
We are steaming into the Gare d'Orleans. Our adventure
is ended. When the consul at Madrid handed us our passports,
he said that we have had an experience unique in the annals of
the American Expeditionary Forces. We are not in the least
disposed to question his statement.
THE CALL.
BY CAROLINE GILTINAN.
A ROBIN calls: "Come, sweet, my mate!"
Believing she will hear.
Within the tree's new leafy green,
A fluttering bit of joy unseen,
She answers low and clear
A few sweet notes.
. And one who hears
Turns sobbingly away,
Her heart a wild, awakened thing
Of poignant pain for robins sing
The meaning of the May.
"THE LEAGUE OF CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY."
BY JOHN p. O'HARA, c.s.c.
RUGUAY is the smallest of the South American
republics. In area it is about the size of Ne-
braska, and it has a population of approximately
one million four hundred thousand inhabitants.
It is located south of Brazil and east of the
Uruguay River, which divides it from the Argentine Republic.
Its capital, Montevideo, is located on a beautiful bay in
the south central portion of the Republic. It corresponds in
latitude to about North Carolina, and its mildly temperate
climate makes it a summer resort for Buenos Aires. Its
winters never have very cold days, except when the pampero,
or wind off the pampas, creates a storm in the bay.
Although the smallest of the South American republics,
Uruguay is one of the most progressive, and it possesses a charm
for the stranger that makes it unique. It is an agricultural
country. In the old days it depended entirely upon grazing for
its wealth. Cattle and sheep fed on the beautiful grass of its
rolling hills; and meat products, wool and hides, paid the in-
habitants a splendid return on their investment. In recent
years Italian farmers have introduced the cultivation of
cereals, and in the southern part of the country fields of grain
are supplanting the immense estancias of earlier days.
Unfortunately, farm life has not brought to little Uruguay
all the blessings of peace and harmony which we associate with
those who live close to the soil. From the beginning, politics
have been the curse of the country. In ninety years of inde-
pendence this Republic has witnessed more than forty revo-
lutions or insurrections, and some of them long and bloody.
In recent years the tendency to religious bigotry has be-
come quite marked in the predominant party. This tendency
can be traced in direct line to the school of false philosophy
that animated the French Revolution. Luis Alberto de Her-
rera, in his book, La Revolution Francesa y la America del
Sur, traces the influence of this philosophy through the history
of the South American republics, and laments the fact that
218 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY [May,
while practical example and aid came from the United States
to South America in its struggle for independence, the dom-
inating spirit, and especially the philosophy of government
upon which the new republics began to function, were essen-
tially byproducts of the French Revolution.
This false philosophy had its particular effect chiefly in
the secularization of education. The University of Montevideo
especially became a centre of infection, and has produced a
generation of very active propagandists of atheism, who now
have practical control of the Government, and who lose no
opportunity to annoy and persecute the Church and win ad-
herents to the cause of atheism.
The very active period of anti-clericalism began seventeen
years ago when Jose Batile y Ordonez assumed the presidency,
a post which he occupied for two terms of four years each,
the second term beginning in 1911. One of his first acts of
hostility to the Church was the removal of the crucifixes from
the hospitals, because, it was alleged, they reminded the
patients of death and consequently had a depressing effect.
He later secured from Congress the suppression of the stipends
paid to the seminary and archbishops, and in 1907 he secured
the passage of a divorce law. As he has selected his own suc-
cessors in office, he has maintained his own policies with prac-
tically no opposition within his party. A separation of Church
and State was finally brought about, with conditions, however,
more favorable than the Church had at first hoped to obtain.
The chapels in public institutions constituted the only property
secularized by the law, and the additional liberty conferred
upon the Church by the separation, has enabled it to work
out a programme of reform that would have been impossible
under the old regime. The latest manifestations of bigotry
on the part of the Government came during July and August,
1920, when Congress ordered the chapels in the public ceme-
teries dismantled, and passed a law permitting duelling.
As already suggested, this opposition has had a good effect
in awakening the consciousness of the Catholics of Uruguay,
and it may be safely asserted that there is more manifestation
of Catholic life in that little Republic now than there has been
since colonial days. A few months ago the Pope created a new
archbishop to fill the See left vacant since the death of Mon-
signor Soler in 1908, and erected two new bishoprics in the
1921.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY 219
country. The long interim was due to the failure of the Gov-
ernment to comply with the conditions of the concordat by
which the new dioceses were created some sixteen years ago.
The present Archbishop, Monsignor Aragone, is only thirty-
seven years of age, and is blessed with the youthful virtues of
zeal, energy and resourcefulness, while his prudence and judg-
ment would do honor to a man many years his senior. He
has begun his administration with a full programme of organ-
ization, which includes Catholic labor unions, Catholic so-
cieties for boys, young men and old men, and the organization
of the social work of the country under a common head. He
is carrying on at present, with American methods, a "drive"
for the necessary funds for this purpose. The goal set was one
million dollars. The "drive" has now well passed the two
million dollar mark.
One of the finest results of the persecution of the Church
in Uruguay has been the Liga de Damas Catolicas del Uruguay,
"League of Catholic Women of Uruguay," which has developed
into one of the most efficient Catholic social organizations in
the world. It was born out of the protest of decency against
the divorce law, and has since that time widened its scope to
take in almost every possible form of social work. Its most
curious, yet most effective, work has been the betterment of
theatrical productions.
When the divorce question was first agitated in Uruguay,
a few Catholic women held a meeting of protest against this
assault upon home life, and decided to circulate a petition
throughout the country to be presented to Congress. The work
was carried into effect and some tens of thousands of signa-
tures to the protest were secured. This was presented to
Congress in due time, and was rejected, because it had not
been made out on the stamped paper required for legal docu-
ments. Undaunted, the women framed their protest in proper
legal form, with an increase of signatures.
In the midst of the divorce agitation Sarah Bernhardt came
to Montevideo to open a new theatre, the Urquiza. She was
announced for three plays, all of them arguments for divorce.
The Committee of Catholic Women waited upon her and begged
her in the name of common decency and womanhood not to
present these plays, but "the divine Sarah" rejected their pleas
and presented the plays announced. The Catholic women then
220 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY [May,
inserted a brief note in the columns of the Catholic newspaper,
El Bien, which stated : "The Committee of Catholic Women an-
nounces that the performance advertised for the Urquiza is
reprehensible." The effect was electrical. The newspapers are
in the habit of publishing the names of those who occupy boxes
at the theatre, and no person who aspired to recognition by the
social leaders who formed the Committee, would witness the
plays. The boxes were not occupied by the better class of
society on these three evenings.
The effect was so gratifying that the Committee was en-
couraged to continue its good work. The programmes of
theatres were obtained in advance; the plays were read by a
commission of intelligent women, and the little announcements
in El Bien appeared from time to time and ruined the season
of many a successful star. I remember that Eleanora Duse
appeared at the Urquiza in 1907 for two weeks with a pro-
gramme of salacious plays. The prices charged were within
the reach of only the wealthier class, and few people of wealth
cared to risk their social position by attending them. The
result was a flat financial failure for the venture.
The work grew by leaps and bounds. All the plays in any
language that were likely to be offered to the public of Monte-
video were secured and the enormous task of classification was
begun. Very often the true character of a play stood out in its
first few pages, and the critics were saved the nausea of read-
ing them through. The enormity of the task can be realized
if we consider that in the Theatrical Guide issued by the
League in 1916, six thousand and five hundred plays were
listed, representing one hundred and four separate classifica-
tions according to national theatres or translations of national
works into other languages.
In the actual classification five qualifications are used:
good, medium, bad, risky, and anti-Catholic. The commission
does not assume the functions of a theological censor. Its
criterion is : the canons of decency and morality as understood
by the Catholic layman. The only sanction for their laws is
the Christian conscience and social propriety. It is a most
effective form of criticism, and its originators have had the
satisfaction of seeing it adopted in Paris and Rome, as well
as in different parts of South America.
Some idea of the broad scope of the present work of the
1921.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY 221
League can be gathered from the annual report issued in
January, 1920. It now has three hundred and fifty-one chap-
ters in different parts of the country, with sixteen central com-
mittees and one hundred and twenty departmental committees.
It conducts sixty-five sewing circles for girls, ten general
schools, sixty-five oratories, various Sunday Schools, ninety
centres for religious instruction, thirty-two libraries and thirty
reading rooms.
The work accomplished by the central committees is
divided as follows:
1. The Committee in charge of the devotion to the Sacred
Heart secured the "enthronization" in five thousand eight hun-
dred and ninety-five homes, and established a hundred secre-
tariates for the spread of this devotion.
2. The Press Committee secured twelve hundred sub-
scriptions to the principal Catholic newspaper, El Bien Pub-
lico, and five hundred and sixty-five for other Catholic news-
papers, besides redistributing twenty-six thousand six hundred
and sixty-eight copies of Catholic papers.
3. The Committee on Theatrical Censure has classified
six thousand five hundred works and published an Index,
which has been very favorably received.
4. The Hispanic-American Committee sent to Santiago
de Compostela in Spain an excellent museum, illustrative of
the culture of the country.
5. The Sewing Circle reported a total of thirty-four thou-
sand two hundred and forty-six pieces of work, representing
a capital turnover of $36,074, and announced, besides, as
spiritual fruits of its labors among five hundred and twenty-
seven girls, a total of twenty-nine thousand and eighteen Com-
munions, two hundred and thirty-five "enthronizations" of the
Sacred Heart, and twenty-five spiritual retreats.
6. The Children's Protective League took care of hun-
dreds of street urchins and newsboys, instructing them in their
religious and moral duties, and furnishing them with food and
clothing whenever possible. This Committee hopes to be able
to broaden the scope of its work, to furnish a wholesome
asylum for all children of this class in the country, after the
manner of the Protectora de la Infancia in Santiago de Chile,
founded twenty-five years ago by the distinguished Catholic
woman, Dona Emeliana Subercaseaux i Concha, a work which
222 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY [May,
today furnishes an asylum for eight hundred and thirty-four
children whose parents have neglected them.
7. The Committee on Schools of Religion has for its
object the religious instruction of children who attend the
public schools. It has seventeen schools in Montevideo with
more than two thousand pupils.
8. The Matrimonial Association has brought about one
thousand two hundred and ninety-six marriage ceremonies,
with nine hundred and fifty-six legitimizations and four hun-
dred and eighteen baptisms. It has contributed $7,114.14 to
the Civil Treasury out of a budget representing receipts of
$18,139 and disbursements of $16,181. The work of this com-
mittee is exceedingly important for social welfare. Many poor
people neglect both the civil and religious marriage ceremonies
because of the expense entailed. It is the duty of this com-
mittee to seek out such cases and supply the necessary funds
for the requirements of the law.
9. The Committee for the erection of a votive sanctuary
in honor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart has constructed a
beautiful church in Punta Carreta, where it was badly needed,
at the cost of $50,000, all of which was collected within the
past year by the members of the Committee.
10. The Central Committee of the League for Young
Women, which is a branch of the League of Catholic Women,
secured the cooperation of its members in many of the im-
portant duties of the League. Its budget shows receipts of
$5,912 and expenses of $4,335.
11. The Clothing Committee, which provides First Com-
munion dresses and wedding gowns for poor girls, distributed
1,879 white dresses during the year, and hundreds of yards of
veiling, and is at present providing house-dresses for those
who persevere in their religious duties.
12. The Committee for the Poor has distributed to poor
boys during a year and a half, six thousand suits, including
First Communion outfits, and has provided in addition hun-
dreds of suits and dresses for the Matrimonial Association and
for poor girls.
13. The Schools-and-Asylums Committee, which had for
its object the promoting of festivals and bazaars for raising
funds, has had to postpone its activities for the time being
because of lack of funds.
1921.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY 223
14. The Club for Working Women has been in operation
for only a few months, but its success inspires hope for the
future broadening of its scope.
15. The Diocesan Commission for Vocations to the
Priesthood has been organized lately.
16. The Central Committee of the Association of Catholic
Women Students, another recent committee, has taken in
hand the welfare of the young women who study at the na-
tional university.
In addition to the work of the committees, numerous other
tasks were undertaken by the central organization. Among
others should be noted the formation of a class in Pedagogy,
directed by the rector of the seminary; a solemn and effective
protest against the movement in Congress to put an end to
private schools; a successful campaign against the indecency of
the Carnival; a campaign in favor of modesty in dress (sup-
ported by the ecclesiastical authorities to the extent of refusing
the Sacraments to women who violated modesty in their
dress) ; a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady in Florida; the
construction of a college for boys and chapel for the Salesian
Fathers; the publication of one hundred thousand pamphlets,
two thousand lectures, one hundred thousand leaflets, five
thousand copies of the Theatrical Index, eighty thousand
copies of the bulletin of the League, and five hundred novenas
to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. These and numerous other
tasks have occupied the attention of these Catholic women-
women who have been maligned without scruple by malicious
meddlers who have labored to give a wrong impression to
South Americans here in the States.
One other work in particular commands our admiration.
During the War, Montevideo was a naval station for both
American and British fleets. These women worked unceasingly
to see that the Catholic members of the crews attended the
Sacraments. They organized social events for them, and for
the first time in the history of the country, they allowed their
daughters to go to dances with American sailors and prome-
nade with them in the parks. Be it said to the everlasting
credit of our sailors, they behaved like gentlemen, and they
made of Uruguay one of the stanchest friends we have in
South America.
This brief outline of the work of the League of Catholic
224 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN URUGUAY [May,
Women would be incomplete without a word about its moving
spirit from its beginning, Mrs. Maria Garcia Lagos de Hughes.
Mrs. Hughes, the daughter of an ancient and distinguished
family of Montevideo and widow of the late Ricardo Hughes,
of English ancestry, reminds one of St. Bridget of Sweden in
her scrupulous care for her family and ceaseless activities for
the good of the Church. Whenever there is a question of social
work to be undertaken, a protest against an abuse, or an
investigation to be made, the first step towards action is a con-
sultation with Mrs. Hughes. Her beautiful, but modest, home
in Pocitos, the famous seaside suburb of Montevideo, is a ren-
dezvous for Catholic social workers. She was the organizer
of the League and its President, until the death of her husband,
about a year ago, caused her to retire from its active direction.
She has kept constantly in full touch with her work, however,
and no matter of importance is ever undertaken without her
counsel. Recently, Benedict XV. recognized her active zeal by
conferring upon her the cross, "Benemerita"
This brief sketch of one of the many Catholic social organ-
izations functioning in Latin America, will give some idea of
the fecundity of the Church there, which is so frequently
described as decadent and corrupt. The work of these noble
women, who devote many hours a day to labors for decency
and morality, for the education and general welfare of the
poor, for the spread of the kingdom of God upon earth, is full
of inspiration and suggestion for Catholic society people of
the United States. These women are not nuns, and they are
not "queer;" they are the "Four Hundred" of Uruguay, and
their influence is such that by a printed line of disapproval,
they can empty a theatre in the populous city. They are intel-
ligent and instructed, and they have the courage of their con-
victions. Certainly, we can learn something from them.
THE CARDINAL'S HAT.
BY FRANCIS GARLIN.
REMEMBRANCE wings no more from any part
Of that wherein his soul had her dominion :
Forgetfulness has nested in his heart
Whose spirit fluttered off on eager pinion
As when, from out the niche of trembling spire,
A swallow flees the knell
Of tolling bell.
But while the mitre crowns a heedless clay,
His scarlet hat is hung neath chiming steeples :
A vigil-keeping memory in his gray
Cathedral for its future times and peoples,
Where meekly burns New Bethlehem's altar-star:
A mindful light before
The Lord's inn-door.
And though we need no bright remembrance here
Of martyrdom that purple princes covet,
Behold! Above James Cardinal Gibbons' bier
Is now installed the gules insignia of it :
The cardinal's hat, the cresset that preserves
For us the ardent fire
Of his desire.
O Countryman! O Prelate over whom
That crimson holds the altar-flames' reflection;
Who lingers as the spirit days intomb;
Arise with Christ's diurnal resurrection
VOL. cxni. 15
THE CARDINAL'S HAT [May,
And bless our sacerdotal banner-stars
That they may bless, in turn,
Our hearts that burn
As lights of love recessed at freedom's shrine
Whereat thy heart was as a luminary:
As flames of faith before the Lord, Whose wine
Made Blood is shed within our sanctuary
Where ever stands New Calvary's altar-cross.
Yea, bless these guardians of
Soul-faith, heart-love.
Yet would we crave thy benediction on
Our tapered hopes alcoved above the Seven
Side-Altars of angelic orison
Sequestered neath the apse of templed Heaven
Where hangs that Thorny Chaplet, from the dome,
Which crowned the Sacrificed!
The Martyr, Christ.
He is the Living Altar under it;
Faith's Reliquary, Love's Repository:
Aye, He, the Living Altar one time lit
With hopes of thine eclipsed by fulgent glory :
Our Living Hope, thy Living Crucifix;
Our mystically Slain,
Thy Living Fane.
And do thou pray the seven-dolored One,
The Living Roseal Window, in that choir,
Through whom doth shine New Eden's supersun
Of Living Light, of Infinite Glory-Fire;
That she, our country's Patron, mind us all
Who hail thee now as her
Remembrancer.
THE CARDINAL'S HAT 227
Who know thee still as citizen of this
Our native land, our fathers' blood-bound Union;
Yet patriot of Paradise whose bliss,
Being both of God and them in blest communion,
Is greater in that Temple cruciform
Since thou, of blood unshed,
Art robed in red.
For lo ! Within that Living Fane a throne
Is crested with thy shield, O goodly fighter;
Though death, in stamping heraldry his own,
Has left thee but the hatchment of a mitre.
Ah! lingering spirit strengthen this our love
Of country, foes would scathe;
Confirm our faith.
And may we not appeal to thee for her
Thy foster-mother, Ireland, of the spirit
That glories in her martyrs? Harkener,
We pray that she obtain what we inherit
From sires who won their liberty, their flag
That God's free wind unfurled
To bless His world.
Hail, almoner of benisons recalled!
Thy memory wings no more across the nation,
Yet do we ever mind thee, purple-palled,
As one whose fame is of thy soul's duration;
The while, from out the niche of trembling spire,
A swallow flees the knell
Of tolling bell.
THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL.
BY MARIE ANTOINETTE DE ROULET.
ID you ask me why that little wooden bowl is the
greatest treasure in the village ? It's a long story,
and the most of it happened a long time ago, but
I'll tell ye about it if so be ye have the time to
listen. Part of it took place here before our eyes.
Part of what had gone before that, my daughter, Mary, had
from Aileen McSwiney herself, God rest her soul. Some of it
Richard told us before he left. Then, of course, some of it
just spread around. You know how news do spread.
"Well, I must be getting to my story. It all began in the
days when the laws were all to be again the Catholics. What
with rack rents, and paying tithes to the English Church, and
famines every few years, and having to keep the priests hidden
for fear of their lives, we were in a bad way entirely. Not that
everything is so fine now.
"Some distance beyond, in - - lived Aileen McSwiney.
I don't know much about her people, for that was before we
knew her, but a sweeter, better girl never lived except my
Mary's mother. There was a young fellow lived there, named
Danny Owen. I think he'd been driven wild by oppression,
for the poor boy did some bad things. Whether he and Aileen
had been sweethearts, I could not be saying, but Aileen, maybe,
had a bit of a liking for him, and I don't believe that he was
the only boy in - - who didn't like her.
"Some way or other he came to be dying, and he cried out
pitiful like for the priest. And sure he must have needed him.
The soggarth couldn't go around openly, for fear of the magis-
trates. He had always to be hiding in caves and huts.
"Now when Aileen was fetching the priest to the poor
dying lad who should come upon them but Richard Wilson.
He was a Protestant boy, who came of English people, and he
was nephew to the Magistrate, a fierce, cruel man.
1921.] THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL 229
"Aileen knew that Richard's uncle would expect him to
take the priest, for that same had been an Irish lad who had
slipped over to France to study for the priesthood, and they
were hot against him. If Richard captured the soggarth, poor
Danny would lose his chance to make his peace with God, and
he seemed so dispairing like, Aileen feared for his soul.
"So she said to the Father: 'I know this lad well. Do you
wait here, your reverence, and I'll see what I can do with him.
It's no risk to me,' she added as the priest hesitated.
"She sweetly steps up to Richard and says: 'Do ye mind
what ye told me last night?' For Richard had made no secret
of his love for Aileen. 'And do ye still mean it?' He answers:
Til mean it till I die, Aileen, darling!'
" 'Then,' says Aileen, 'here's the priest, going to comfort a
dying man. If you'll not betray him, we will be married right
now, for it's only by a priest I'd ever be married to you,
Richard.'
"Now it was against the law for a Protestant to be married
by a priest, and if Richard did that, he couldn't inform against
the Father without putting his own head into the noose, as
Aileen knew right well.
"But the girl was his own heart's jewel, so didn't he take
her hand and step up to the Father.
" 'Father,' says Aileen, 'will ye please marry us as quickly
as ye can, and then hasten on the way? If you're taken,' she
adds, coaxing like, 'and he dies without you whatever will
happen to his poor soul? Richard's a good lad,' she continues,
seeing the Father still hesitate, 'and he knows I'll never be
changing my religion even for the likes of him ! He's running
a big risk for my sake,' she says.
"So they were married there in the glen, with two of the
neighbors for witnesses. Aileen promised to meet Richard
late the next night, so they could go away, and start life some-
where that they weren't known. Then the priest gave Danny
the last sacraments, and helped his poor soul depart in
peace.
"That was when Richard and Aileen came here to live.
Being a Protestant, Richard got work easy. They lived in that
neat little house yonder. We didn't know for some time that
Aileen was a Catholic. Indeed, all I've just been after telling
you, we only learned years after.
230 THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL [May,
"Well, Aileen didn't say much for fear of hurting her hus-
band. He was real good to her, but he was so afraid that some-
one would find out that he'd been married by a priest, that he
was quite short with the Catholics. He went to the English
Church regular as Sunday came around, but Aileen wouldn't
go. Folk didn't suspect at first that she was a Catholic. They
thought she might be a Presbyterian from the North, but she
was so laughing and merry spoken, it puzzled them.
"When the new parson came from England and his house
wasn't finished, Richard had him come and board with them.
Like as not, he thought it safer to have a parson in the house.
Things went well enough, but that the parson used to nag
Aileen about going to church of a Sunday, until Aileen told
him flat, that if he didn't leave her be, he'd get nothing but
cold potaties and tea on Sundays. She said that often she
didn't really feel well enough to do more than cook for Rich-
ard, anyway. She never was very strong. The hardships she
had as a girl wore her out. Well, the parson was an English-
man and fond of a hearty meal and Aileen's cooking was the
best in the parish so he passed no more remarks about
church-going.
"After they had lived here for nine or ten years, came a
famine. The suffering of our people was terrible to see. My
wife was ill with a fever, and there was my daughter, Mary,
with all the little ones to care for and never a bite for them.
I was sore troubled. But so were the whole of us. There was
not a house in the valley that was without keening and
sorrow.
"The Wilsons had food, for Richard was Protestant, but
often I saw Aileen stand in her doorway and look out over the
valley, with her face as sad as the Mother of God at the foot
of the Cross, and her thin hands clasped, as if she was praying
God to have mercy on the people here in the valley.
"The parson very kindly wrote to England for help, and
promised assistance to all who would attend Protestant serv-
ices on Sunday. Reing what he was, he couldn't understand
how we'd let a small thing like religion come between us and a
good dinner. Aileen looked sadder than ever, and even Rich-
ard didn't like it, for one of the boys heard him say : 'In God's
name, parson, have you no charity? You'd let these people
starve to death, while you wait to bargain about the food.
1921.] THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL 231
You, who live on the tithes extorted from them, when they
have not money to pay their rent.' The parson and Richard
weren't so friendly after that.
"Richard tried to help, but he was just a workman like
the rest of us, and his people were all angered at him that he
ran away and married Aileen, and he could do nothing for us.
"One day I had been searching everywhere for food and
none could I find. I would not turn souper even for the sake
of herself and the childher, but I had a dread of going home
with nothing to give them. I was determined to ask nothing
of the parson a blight on him but my feet would turn to-
wards the Wilsons' house.
"Aileen was at the door. 'Myles,' she called, 'oh, Myles
O'Brien.'
"I steps up. 'Yes, Mrs. Wilson?' I says. 'You were after
calling me?'
" 'I was that,' she answers. 'Please tell me if you have any
food at home.'
" 'I have not, ma'am, but I'll take no devil's gifts from the
parson.'
" 'No, don't,' she says, 'don't give up your blessed Faith,
Myles. God will help you if you are only true to Him.'
"That was the first she let drop to show she was one of us.
She went on, pointing at a hollow tree a few steps from the
door. 'Send your Mary here after dark, and bid her fetch you
the wooden bowl out of that hollow tree. What's in it will
be some of my own,' she added, 'but I have a right to
share.'
"That night Mary went down the road and to the hollow
tree. There lay this same wooden bowl, covered as it is now.
Mary took it and hurried home. When she brought it in we
uncovered it, and there lay a savory stew. There were bits of
meat, and potaties and some bread. It was just the size of a
meal for a hungry man or woman in easy times, but sure we
had a feast. We gave herself a taste of the gravy, for she
couldn't eat anything heavier, and each of the childher had a
chunk of potatie and a bite of meat. Then as Mary and I ate
a bit of the bread dipped in the gravy, Mary said :
" 'Dada, Mrs. Wilson is after sending us her own dinner?'
" 'I couldn't tell ye that,' I said, 'but ye must wash the bowl
and put it where ye found it.'
232 THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL [May,
"As the days passed we heard tell of more and more who
had received gifts in the little wooden bowl. There were many
good men whose courage had been worn by the sight of little
suffering childher, and the brave smile on the sunken cheeks
of the uncomplaining women. Some way, Aileen always
seemed to know when a man could bear no more, and she
would direct him to the little wooden bowl. There were others
in the parish whom a thousand deaths could not make
untrue to their God, and sure these same also received
comfort.
"Aileen could have had nothing herself all those days but
a sup of tea at noon, for before the dawn in the morning, and
just after dark at night time, there was the bowl filled with
food for someone.
"There were some desperate enough to rob the parson's
supplies, but no one could learn where he hid them. When
Larry Flynn managed to scrape together a few pence and
went to the parson, and begged him to sell him a bit of food
for his wife who was waiting the coming of a little stranger,
what did the omadhaun do but say he'd sell nothing to
Papists?
"Well, my Mary went over to Aileen and told her of this,
and of the elegant fight Larry had with the parson, and the
little wooden bowl soon found its way to poor Nora
Flynn.
"As time went on, it gradually came to be that the families
in the valley took turns going to the little wooden bowl. All
this time Aileen had been growing paler and paler. She
seemed weak and faint like, when one of us would see her, but
none of us dreamed that she could be hungering. My Mary
worrited about her. One day Mary was over there, telling her
how grateful the whole of us were to her, and how, if there
should ever be anything we could do to help her or to ease her,
the doing of it would make us that proud and happy.
" 'Could you get a priest in time of of trouble?' asked
Aileen.
" 'We could that,' Mary answered, wondering like.
"Aileen pulled a bit of green ribbon from its hiding place
behind one of the bricks in the chimney.
" 'If ever I need a priest bad,' she says, Til put this bit of
green in the wooden bowl, and try and get Richard and the
1921.] THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL 233
parson out of the way. Whoever it be that finds it, can try
and get me a priest. Will ye ask the others?'
"My Mary promised, wondering the while if poor Mrs.
Wilson had maybe had a warning and not knowing the
truth.
"Aileen had been giving out of help in her little bowl for
nigh more than two months when Nora Flynn, up again, and
with a thin little baby in her arms may the blight rest on the
parson, and his English masters went to the tree to get a bite
and a sup for Larry and the babe.
"The bowl was empty save for a scrap of green ribbon.
Nora, just up from bed, didn't understand, so she came to my
Mary just like everyone did to have it explained.
"As soon as Mary ever saw the bit of ribbon, she turned to
her brother: Tim,' she says, 'Mrs. Wilson wants a priest. Go
as quick as ever you can, and see if you can find Father O'Hea.
I think he'll be at - ,' she whispers the place to him.
"Some of the others were after objecting. 'Sure it's a trap
got up by that dirty English parson and her black Protestant
husband. It's murdering the priest they'll be. Don't go.'
"Shame!' says my Mary, 'and is it this way ye reward
Aileen's kindness? She saves all of ye from death, and some
of ye from worse, and ye try to keep the priest from her.
Sure if there's any danger at all, at all, its Father O'Hea would
be the first to come. Tim, you go!'
"Tim knew his sister too well, and he was too wise a lad
to disobey, so he set off at a quick pace.
" 'Now,' says my Mary, 'about four others can go and look
in different places, in case Tim misses the soggarth.'
' 'Sure and the holy man don't mind risking his neck at all,
at all,' says Annie Mulvaney, but some of the others were dis-
puting like, when who should come running up, all out of
breath, but Richard Wilson.
' 'Do any of you know where I can find a priest?' he asks.
' 'Why do you want to know, Mr. Wilson?' questions my
Mary.
"He turns to her, quick like. 'I fear Aileen is dying,' he
says, sort of choked, 'and I asked her what I could do, and she
said : "I want a priest." So I said : "You shall have one, sweet-
heart, but he wouldn't come with me, would he?" She an-
swered: "If you'll put this bit of green ribbon in the little
234 THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL [May,
wooden bowl in the hollow tree, and get the parson away,
'twill be all right." So I did as she asked, but I feared she
might be delirious or dreaming. Can you get me the
priest?'
" 'I have sent for the priest just now,' Mary says, 'and four
of you others go, too.'
" Til be one,' says Larry Flynn, 'for sure she was powerful
good to Nora.'
" 'There is not one of us that has not received a kindness
from her,' said Andy Dongan. So Larry and Andy and two
more set off.
" Then Mary turns to Mr. Wilson. 'Sure we got the green
ribbon, Mr. Wilson. Your wife has been kind to the whole of
us, and I had been after telling her that if ever she needed the
priest just to leave her ribbon in that same place where you
put it, and we'd try and fetch him to her.'
" 'She has been putting part of her dinner there to give
those who are starving,' piped up little Thady Malloy.
" 'Now,' says Mary, paying no more notice to Thady than
if he lived in the moon, 'now, Mr. Wilson, the best thing you
can do for Aileen is to put this in her hand,' and she gives him
the bit of green ribbon, 'and if ye are one of us ye can say
your prayers with her until the Father gets here.'
" Tm not one of you,' Richard says, 'but I'll do what I can.
Thank you for your kindness, Mary.'
"He hurries off, and as soon as he's gone Mary says:
'Sure, he means all right to us, but there is no knowing who
might come along. We might walk down and see what is
doing.'
"So we all strolled down to the Wilsons' house and waited
around. Inside we could see Richard kneeling by Aileen's bed.
" 'Why did ye tell him to take her the ribbon, Mary?'
asks Nora Flynn.
" 'Didn't ye notice,' says Mary, 'the poor woman had it all
knotted up into a rosary, with a knot for each bead? That bit
of stick at the end was a cross made of two twigs. Sure and
this blessed moment she'll be saying her beads.'
"Just then along comes Tim with Father O'Hea. Mary
went in with him to the sick room. Richard came outside with
Mary while Aileen made her confession. When that same was
finished, the soggarth called to Richard that he might go in
1921.] THE LITTLE WOODEN BOWL 235
again, and some of the women followed him in and knelt to
pray while Aileen received Holy Communion. We were keep-
ing a close watch lest the parson bad cess to himshould
come strolling along.
1 'Well,' says Richard, as his reverence knelt to pray for
the dying woman, Tm no Catholic I'm not one of you but
you're all kindly and good and you risk your lives for others
and I'd rather be one of you than one of the parson's.'
" 'Oh, Richard,' whispers Aileen, rousing a little, 'when ye
spared the priest that night our marriage night ye helped
save a poor lad's soul, and I have prayed and prayed that ye'd
be given a reward.'
" Tve had my reward. I've been rewarded with the best
wife a man ever had,' he says, holding her thin, thin hand
in his.
" 'But I wanted ye to have a better reward,' mutters
Aileen, 'I wanted ye to have your soul saved, Richard, dear.'
" 'Please God, I will,' he answers, solemn like. Til be a
Catholic as soon as his reverence will let me.'
"Aileen smiled, and her face looked like an angel's, as she
kissed him and said softly: 'Good-bye, then, Richard I'll be
seeing ye in the morning.'
"Then she died a martyr who had starved to death for
others. We took the Father away without the parson's see-
ing him, but before he left he had promised to instruct
Richard.
"We were all thinking he had just been disturbed like by
his wife's death, and maybe he wouldn't turn at all all but
Mary. She was not surprised when he became one of us
some months later. But even Mary was surprised at what
happened a little after that.
"Richard was sitting by our fire one night, for since
Aileen's death he seemed to be liking our company, who had
loved her, better than his empty house and the parson.
"Suddenly he spoke : 'Do you remember, Myles,' he says,
'in the Gospel Christ says to the Apostles, "Feed My lambs,
feed My sheep?"'
" 'Yes,' I says, wondering what he could be thinking of.
"Aileen died feeding His lambs, in one sense of the word,'
he goes on, looking at the childher on the floor, 'and I'd like to
spend the rest of my life "till the morning" feeding His lambs
236 THE SHRINE [May,
in another way. Do you think if I could get to France I could
study for the priesthood?'
" 'Sure that ye could,' says Mary, 'and it's that same that
would be pleasing Aileen in heaven.'
" 'Please God, I would like to become a priest, and come
back here to Ireland, and work for souls,' says Richard.
"Well, it all came to pass as he planned. For some twenty
years past Father Wilson, God love him, has been risking life
and limb here in God's green isle, and everywhere he goes a
little rosary made of a knotted green ribbon goes with him.
The little wooden bowl stays here in Mary's care, and in it the
whole of the neighbors put their spare pence to be used for
charity in Aileen's memory. And that same is the story of the
little wooden bowl."
THE SHRINE.
BY HARRY LEE.
I HAVE made me a shrine to Mary,
In a little upper room.
It is fair with fleckless linen,
Fair with the Maytime bloom.
Blossomy boughs of the pear tree,
Wild, sweet things of the wood,
And a slender candle burning
To stainless Motherhood.
The blossomy boughs will perish,
The flickering flame depart,
But I've made me a shrine to Mary
In the upper room of my heart.
flew Books.
HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION IN PLANTS. By C. Stuart Gager.
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Sons. $1.25 net.
This is a little book to which we can give hearty commenda-
tion, for it is well written and illustrated, many of the diagrams
being especially excellent and useful for teachers, and, as prices
now go, not expensive. Further, and it is an important "further,"
the attitude taken up with regard to evolution and religion is
eminently sane. We own that we think the term, used here and
in other books, of "special creation" is ambiguous, for we doubt
if many persons hold the older view in the Miltonic sense or any-
thing approximating to it. But the author makes it quite clear
what he means, and with his statement, "Creation is regarded, not
as having taken place once and for all, but as being a continuous
process, operating from the beginning without ceasing and still
in process," we need not quarrel if it is remembered that it is the
process which is continuous and progressive, though the concep-
tion was one and eternal. At a later page (85) we find: "To state
that species were created by God does not satisfy the legitimate
curiosity of the scientific man. What he wishes to know is: By
what method was creation accomplished? God might have
worked in various ways." Nothing could be better put, and it is
really refreshing to read such words in place of the too often
ignorant and, what is worse, uncomprehending statements which
we meet far too frequently in modern books on science. There is
no real dispute over this matter when properly understood, but
too many writers will not take the trouble to ascertain the views
of those who hold the Christian Faith.
We have read with great interest the discussion of that very
vexed question on the heredity of acquired conditions on which
we note that the writer refuses to accept the view that such are
heritable; and places himself, therefore, in opposition to such
recent writers, for example, as Bather and MacBride. What we
do not find is an answer to the question, "Where do variations
come from, if the environment is of no effect?" We cannot sup-
pose that the author would be prepared to accept the extreme view
hinted at by some Mendelians, though, so far as we are aware,
definitely put forward by none, that everything was in the original
germ of life and is gradually unfolding itself as the "stops" are
being removed. Yet, if this is not the case, where is the explana-
238 NEW BOOKS [May,
tion? Herbert Spencer said that either there was a hereditary
transmission of acquired characters or there was no such thing as
evolution, and Haeckel thought it would be better to follow the
Mosaic account than to deny such transmission which was a
fearful length for such a man to go ! Of course, we cannot discuss
this question here nor many other interesting points which we
have marked in this excellent little book.
Those who desire an accurate yet simple explanation of the
"live" problems of the biology of today will find them here, and
the Mutation Theory has not to our knowledge been as well
dealt with in any manual as in this ! Indeed, its fate is too often to
be ignored or slurred over, probably because it cuts across the
extreme Darwinian view of small variations, which so many of us
find it impossible to hold. To teachers of biology, in schools
especially, we commend this book, for they will find it a real
gold mine.
THE CONTROL OF PARENTHOOD. Edited by James Marchant.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50.
This book is announced by the publishers as a collection of
essays in which "distinguished scientists, economists, and leaders
of religious thought give their frank opinions on the reduction of
population and birth control." The essays number nine, and are
prefaced by an introduction from the pen of the Anglican Bishop
of Birmingham, England. Dean Inge, of St. Paul's; Sir Rider
Haggard, Mr. Cox, Editor of the Edinburgh Review, and Principal
Garvie, are the best known names among the contributors.
It need hardly be said here that, for the Catholic, there can
be but one legitimate method of birth control: voluntary con-
tinence in marriage, and even that only with the consent of both
parties. No human being can be forced to enter the married
state, which is, in its very essence, a free contract, but once
having entered it, he is morally bound to live up to its obliga-
tions; and nothing. can be plainer than that the primary obligation
of matrimony is to do nothing to hinder the primary end of
matrimony, the propagation of the human race. The fundamental
error in birth-control propaganda an error resulting from the
superficiality and loose thinking of modern philosophy, and under-
lying in one or another phase much of the modern craze for re-
form is a confusion of expediency and morality. No less signal
an error is the subordination of individual rights, even those
inhering by natural law, to the supposed good of society or the
State; the mistaken conclusion, of course, from utterly false
premises on the relations of the individual and the State. Large
1921.] NEW BOOKS 23<)
families among poor people are a severe burden, and keep the
standard of living of the family and of the State, which is only
the sum of many such families at a very low level ; thus the argu-
ment for birth-control opens. Therefore, they go on to say, it
would be better for parents, for children and for State, if un-
wanted children were not brought into the world. To limit the
families of the poor, a knowledge of contraceptive methods must
be available, and, since the law, almost universally throughout the
United States, prohibits the giving of information on methods of
preventing conception, the law must be repealed. It would be
better: therefore, such a thing must be done; a fallacy patent to
any fledgling logician. And in all this never a word of God, the
Author of the human race, the Founder of the order of nature,
Who has written His law in the heart of man.
The essays in this volume run the whole gamut from a fairly
close approximation of the Catholic position to sheer Material-
ism. They exemplify the danger of approaching a moral problem
from a purely logical standpoint, for thus may a very reverent
and sincere consideration of an ethical question prove utterly
mistaken. Dean Inge, for instance, recalls St. Paul's fine meta-
phor, that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and recog-
nizes that self-restraint, because it spiritualizes, makes for the
increase of conjugal love. But, because he believes that ignorance
of contraceptive methods encourages the practice of abortion, he
would, apparently, be willing to see that ignorance dispelled, and
rely on other methods to discourage undesirable habits, "if we
think they are undesirable." Principal Garvie is much nearer the
Catholic view, though he cannot quite let himself go the full
length to which it would seem that his convictions were about
to carry him.' Mr. Cox, on the other hand, approaches the ques-
tion in quite a different spirit; for him it is more natural to take
simple and obvious precautions against the procreation of un-
wanted children than it is to wear clothes or cook food. He thinks,
too, that ecclesiastical opposition to the practice of birth control
is based on theological dogma; "the whole matter turns on a
somewhat squalid story related in the thirty-eighth chapter of
Genesis." Has Mr. Cox forgotten the concluding verse of that
"squalid" story? "And, therefore, the Lord slew him because he
did a detestable thing." Such summary punishment can only be
explained by the heinousness of the sin; nor has the lapse of cen-
turies since the first sin made the practice less detestable in the
sight of the eternal God. Regard for His immutable law is the
all-sufficient reason for the Church's teaching on the matter of
birth control.
240 NEW BOOKS [May,
THE NEW JERUSALEM. By G. K. Chesterton. New York:
George H. Doran Co. $3.00.
Mr. Chesterton, in his preface, announces that this book is
"only an uncomfortably large notebook." It is, however, much
more than that. Here and there, it is true, we learn interesting
things about Jerusalem as it is today, about the different elements
that make up the population, their jealousies and misunderstand-
ings, about the turmoil which slumbers underneath the surface
ready to burst out at any moment. Occasionally, too, we are
given typical guide-book descriptions, which Mr. Chesterton doles
out a bit shamefacedly like so many sops to Cerberus.
The real Mr. Chesterton, the charming, the brilliant, the
maker of paradoxes, who enjoys fairy tales and loves life, and
who has a Macaulayesque way of stating difficulties in the large,
while reducing them to their lowest common denominators, and
who has equally well the Macaulayesque way of solving them with
such scintillating nonchalance as if to say, "Simplicity itself when
you know how," this, the real Chesterton, appears in nearly every
one of the three hundred pages of this book. What Mr. Chesterton
really did was to take half a dozen notebooks in his bag and set
out for Jerusalem, ruminating on the way and ruminating on his
arrival, and carefully jotting down his ruminations in his note-
book. And he ruminates about many things about critics, about
the English worship of old customs and red tape, about factions
and fashions and politics, about the Crusades and the very human
men who took part in them, and about dozens of other things,
finally, almost as an afterthought, devoting a chapter, and a bril-
liant one, to the psychology of the Jew.
Some of the chapters in the book are so frankly isolated units
that they belong almost anywhere in the world except in a book
on the new Jerusalem, but they are typically Chestertonian, which
means that they are brilliant, surcharged with vitality, thought-
provoking, paradoxical. Of critics he says: "The mistake of
critics is not that they criticize the world; it is that they never
criticize themselves. They compare the alien with the ideal; but
they do not at the same time compare themselves with the ideal;
rather they identify themselves with the ideal." Spoken like a
wise man, yea, a very Daniel. Meeting the unthinking sightseers,
Chesterton says: "I delicately suggested to those who were dis-
appointed in the Sphinx that it was just possible that the Sphinx
was disappointed in them. The Sphinx had seen Julius Caesar; it
had very probably seen St. Francis when he brought his flaming
charity to Egypt; it had certainly looked, in the first high days of
the revolutionary victories, on the face of the young Napoleon.
1921.] NEW BOOKS
241
Is it not barely possible that after these experiences, it might be a
little depressed at the sight of you and me?'*
One of Chesterton's most brilliant pages is devoted to the
repulsive sight not of the poor asking for money, but of the rich
asking for more money, as they do, he declares, when they thrust
their clamorous advertisements into every corner of civilization.
By the next page, he has turned his thoughts to the ephemeral
nature of mere fashion, and takes a thrust at the "educated Eng-
lish who are now trying to forget their very recent idolatry of
everything German." It is a delight to read : "The way to be really
a fool is to try to be practical about unpractical things," or to
learn that it would be diverting to find English politicians imitat-
ing the methods of Eastern politicians, Mr. Bonar Law and Mr.
Lloyd George no longer merely vaporing, but "hopping and caper-
ing in front of a procession, spinning round and round till they
were dizzy and waving and crossing a pair of umbrellas in a
thousand invisible patterns."
Whenever the prolific Mr. Chesterton presents the public
with a new volume, that public is certain to find it, as in the
present case, full of brilliancy, charm, and wisdom, overflowing
with that personality which is so large and so buoyant that it has
impressed powerfully and for good the literature of our day. The
children of light, whether they are Chestertonians or not, cannot
afford to pass by The New Jerusalem.
THE CHURCH AND LABOR. Prepared and Edited for the De-
partment of Social Action of the National Catholic Welfare
Council. By John A. Ryan, D.D., LL.D., and Joseph Husslein,
S.J., Ph.D. New York: The Macmillan Co. $3.75.
In publishing this work, Dr. Ryan and Dr. Husslein have
performed an important service. They have given us in a single
volume every official pronouncement of present importance issued
by any Pope or bishop on the labor question since the Industrial
Revolution. The authoritative Catholic teaching on labor rela-
tions is presented in the words of the last three Popes, and in the
official statements of the hierarchies of America, Ireland, France
and Germany, and Cardinals Gibbons, Manning, O'Connell and
Bourne. In addition, the views of Frederic Ozanam and the teach-
ing of Bishop Ketteler are expounded by Father Husslein, with
frequent quotations from their works. There is a short introduc-
tion by Dr. Ryan, all too short in fact, which serves as a very help-
ful guide to the study of the documents as a group. The editors
have also prefaced to some of the documents brief sketches of the
circumstances under which they were issued. The volume con-
VOL. cxni. 16
242 NEW BOOKS [May,
eludes with reprints of two essays by Dr. Ryan, on A Living Wage
and The Reconciliation of Capital and Labor, and Dr. Husslein's
Catholic Social Platform.
As is so well pointed out by Dr. Ryan in the Introduction, a
study of the material which comprises this book will not only
acquaint one with the content of the Church's teaching on the
labor question, but will reveal also the historical continuity of
that teaching. It will throw into high relief the stand made by
great Catholic leaders like Ozanam and Bishop Ketteler, in the
middle of the last century, against the tide of individualistic eco-
nomics that was engulfing the thought and making barren the in-
dustrial policy of Europe in their day. It is indeed consoling for
Catholics, and should be enlightening to non-Catholic students, to
contrast the teachings of these two enthusiastic advocates of
Catholic principles in social relations, with "The Mind of the Rich"
and "The Conscience of the Rich" of England so scathingly por-
trayed by John and Barbara Hammond in the chapters under
those titles in their work, The Town Labourer, 1760-1832. Father
Husslein sermonizes a bit, which may be somewhat irritating to
non-Catholic readers, but he sounds a call to action which we
Catholics will find it difficult to ignore with comfort to our own
consciences.
The great founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society was
not content with merely combating the fallacies of Socialism. He
offered a positive system of economic thought and a programme
which he derived from the rules of justice and charity enjoined
by the Church. He enunciated the principle of the living wage,
and pointed out exactly why the settlement of wages and condi-
tions of employment by individual bargaining operated to prevent
the securing of just terms by the laborer. Nor did he shrink from
remedies at variance with the prevailing economic philosophy of
his day. Like Leo XIII., nearly a half century later, he advocated
labor organization and, as a last resort, state interference in the
labor contract.
Bishop Ketteler, too, condemned the fallacies of laissez faire
no less strongly than those of Socialism. The way out, he insisted,
was to be found only through the application of the old Christian
rules of life to industrial relations. Not Lasalle, not Mill, not
Bastiat, but St. Thomas Aquinas was his guide. A full seventy
years ago this great-hearted Bishop, equally great in intellect and
vision, whom Leo XIII. called "my great precursor in the labor
cause," attacked the notion that labor should be regarded as a
commodity and advocated trade-unionism, legal regulation of
hours and conditions in workshops, prohibition of child labor, and
1921.] NEW BOOKS
243
compensation for industrial accidents. He also held out the ideal
of group ownership and raanagament by the workers themselves.
Father Husslein had a difficult task in culling the views and
teachings of these two noble Catholic leaders from their many
writings and making them available for us in such brief space.
He well merits our gratitude for having done it so well.
The next document in chronological order brings us to the
America of the eighties. It is Cardinal Gibbons* Memorial to the
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda urging that
the Knights of Labor in the United States be not condemned by
the Church. It is difficult to set limits to the pride and gratitude
with which American Catholics should regard this plea, a grati-
tude which should be shared by all who believe that workingmen
should be allowed to organize, to protect and advance their legiti-
mate interests. Yet how many of those who turn the pages of
this volume, Catholics as well as non-Catholics, will here see this
far-sighted document for the first time!
The Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the key document of the
whole series, is next in point of date. It sets the seal of Papal
approval on the teachings that have gone before and proclaims
anew, for an altered industrial society, the ancient rights and
duties of labor. The lessons taught by the Holy Father, old in
principle, but modern in their application, may be read again in
Cardinal Manning's masterly, eloquent, and even jubilant review
of the Encyclical. We find the same Pope applying these prin-
ciples in his Apostolic Letter on Christian Democracy. These
rules of action are summarized and confirmed by Pope Pius X.
in his Apostolic Letter to the Bishops of Italy on Social Action.
Five other Papal documents, all in the spirit of Rerum Novarum,
and urging or commending action in accordance with it, are also
included. One of these is the Encyclical of Pius X. to the German
Hierarchy, approving the practice of Catholic workmen in joining
trade unions not exclusively Catholic in their membership, so
long as these organizations do not require them to act contrary
to the teachings of the Church.
The pronouncements of the hierarchies of the four countries
are all recent. The earliest is the Pastoral Letter of the Bishops
of Ireland on the Labor Question, of February, 1914. The Pas-
toral of the German Bishops on Socialism was issued after the
establishment of the Republic. Cardinal Bourne's pastoral was
written before the armistice, but it is occupied in the main with
the principles by which the post-war readjustments should be
governed. One may observe its consonance with the Bishops'
Programme of Reconstruction and the sections on industrial rela-
244 NEW BOOKS [May,
tions of the Pastoral Letter of our own hierarchy, both of which
are republished in this volume.
Even the listing of these documents by title establishes the
value of the book. Some of them are now fairly well known,
by name at least, in America. Others are not only practically
unknown, but difficult of access to the ordinary lay student of
social problems outside the covers of this volume. Father Huss-
lein's sections on Ozanam and Bishop Ketteler are a real contri-
bution to our knowledge. The importance of the book is so great
and its wide circulation so desirable, as evidenced by the fact
that it was published under the auspices of the Social Action
Department of the Welfare Council, that we cannot but regret
that the publishers are compelled to charge so high a price for it.
Let us hope that a cheaper edition may soon be possible so that
the volume may be accessible to all.
THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO. By Robert T. Kerlin. New York:
E. P. Button & Co.
This is a gravely important book. It seriously demands wide
and interested attention. Its author is Professor of English at the
Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va. His work is a com-
pilation from the Negro press of the United States for the four
months immediately succeeding the Washington, D. C., riots in
1919. Virtually the entire Afro-American press, consisting of two
daily newspapers, a dozen magazines and nearly three hundred
weeklies, were closely studied by the author, and copious charac-
teristic utterances have been quoted, and grouped together, under
various important heads, which show the state of feeling and of
opinion among negroes concerning such events as the Washington
riot, the Chicago race war, and the lynchings of the South. The
quotations also illustrate the Negro reaction to the World War
and to the discussion of problems of reconstruction. In this book
you hear, as from a phonograph, the actual voice of the Negro
Race as it now is, uttering the Negro mind on one of the gravest
problems of the United States the race question.
One of the most remarkable of the many remarkable points
concerning this vital book is the light it shows upon the amazing
growth of the Negro press in the United States; its practical and
very effective organization; its truly wonderful expansion; the
vigor and merit of a great deal of the literary expression to be
found in it; and, most significant of all, what may be termed the
press-consciousness of American negroes. "As for the prosperity
of these periodicals," says Professor Kerlin, "there is abundant
evidence. As for their influence the evidence is no less. The
1921 -] NEW BOOKS
245
Negro seems to have newly discovered his fourth estate, to have
realized the extraordinary power of his press. Mighty as the
pulpit has been with him, the press now seems to be foremost.
It is freer than the pulpit, and there is a peculiar authority in
printer's ink. His newspaper is the voice of the Negro."
Fifteen years ago it was the exceptional Negro home that
received its race newspaper each week; five years ago it was the
average home; today the average Negro home receives usually two
or more race periodicals; and many homes, offices, stores, schools,
churches and libraries, receive from six to more than a score.
The quotations deal with such subjects as the condemnation
of the white press for its alleged unfairness to the Negro; the
coming of new leadership for the Negro race; the repudiation of
the Negro's former spirit of subservience and timidity; the pride
of the Negro race in the achievements of its members who took
part in the War; the bitter resentment felt for alleged unjust
discrimination against colored service men; the ardent hopes in-
spired in Negroes by President Wilson's utterances on the rights
of racial groups, subject peoples, and safety and freedom for all,
during the Paris Conferences; the grievances and demands of the
Negro in such matters as the ballot, participation in government,
the administration of justice, the question of social equality; race
riots and lynchings; the economic and living conditions of the
Negro in the South and in the North; and the various proofs which
the Negro advances to prove the progress of his race in business,
education, art and literature. It is truly the voice of the Negro,
in the pulpit and in the press, crying out to the American people
for justice, and all these subjects are illustrated by the vivid
extracts grouped together in this most remarkable book. And it is
not heard at second-hand, or as an echo, but is the living, passion-
ate voice of the Negro. No book dealing with the problems of the
United States deserves more instant and statesmanlike attention
than the volume under discussion.
CHARACTER AND OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES. By
George Santayana. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
$3.50.
Santayana is not merely that rara avis among our contempor-
aries, a penetrating and, quite often, a profound thinker. He also
commands a style of exquisite lucidity and grace, and in a very
real sense his best work is literature. His reputation in Europe is
much higher than it is in America, where for more than twenty
years he lived as a professor of philosophy at Harvard. Indeed,
recently an anthology of Santayana's prose writings was com-
246 NEW BOOKS : May,
piled with rare selective skill by a distinguished expatriated Amer-
ican now. settled at Oxford, Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith. The
present volume contains four remarkable chapters enshrining the
author's matured and detached opinions upon the American life
and thought of today, and there are, in addition, two able chap-
ters devoted to the personalities and philosophical achievements of
James and Royce. Another chapter keenly discusses "later specu-
lations." Especially interesting are his analyses of the academic
environment of American life from the beginning to the present
time, and his portraits of James and Royce are unforgetable. To
do this book justice would be impossible within the limits of a
brief review. One can do nothing more than indicate the nature
of the work and commend what in it seems genuinely deserving
of commendation. With much that Santayana says the reviewer
is in whole-hearted sympathy. But the American Catholic reader
is not unlikely to find, on at last two of Mr. Santayana's pages,
opinions expressed about the special ethos of Catholicism in these
United States, which will cause a mild wonderment, shading off
into mild irritation, and ending in heart-easing mirth. The dark
revelation comes on pages 47 and 48.
THE MAKING OF THE REPARATION AND ECONOMIC SEC-
TIONS OF THE TREATY. By Bernard M. Baruch. New
York: Harper & Brothers. $3.00.
The moral, political, and economic character of the provisions
of the Treaty of Versailles will doubtless remain a subject of
acute controversy for many years to come. Already it has be-
come evident that the Treaty, which it was hoped would both
make redress for the wrongs committed by Germany, and restore
Europe to a more stable condition, is far from accomplishing
that object. Omitting consideration of those features of the
Treaty, and they are many, to which no exception can fairly be
taken, the controversy has chiefly raged over the economic and
reparation clauses. A year ago a formidable attack was made
upon those clauses by a volume entitled, The Economic Conse-
quences of the Peace, in which the author, J. M. Keynes, a mem-
ber of the British delegation, undertook to show that the Treaty of
Versailles was not only false to the principles asserted during the
War by the Allies as the basis of a just peace, but would be the
cause of perpetuating national antagonisms and endangering the
peace of Europe for the future.
The present volume comes as an apologia for the part played
by the American delegation in the making of the Treaty. Mr.
Baruch was economic adviser to the American Commission and
1921.] NEW BOOKS
247
American member of the two important Reparation and Economic
Commissions, and he, therefore, speaks with authority. In order
to explain why it was that the "ideal peace," which onlookers in
America demanded, could not be obtained, Mr. Baruch calls at-
tention to the conditions of hatred and suspicion of the enemy
which reached their climax in the days following the armistice.
His conclusion is that while the American delegation struggled
hard to obtain fairer terms, the Treaty embodies the best that
could be negotiated under the circumstances, and that its terms
are sufficiently elastic to permit of subsequent modification on
points that shall be shown to work injustice. In particular, the
Reparation Commission is given powers of discretion which will
enable it to help bring about a just peace, if the Powers really
desire to obtain such.
ATHENIAN TRAGEDY. A Study in Popular Art. By Thomas
Dwight Goodell, Late Professor of Greek in Yale University.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
"The aim of these pages is to clear the way to a better under-
standing of Greek Tragedy. They are intended for any who are
reading the plays with serious interest." This is the purpose
which Professor Goodell set before him in Athenian Tragedy.
It is a modest understatement of the work which he successfully
accomplishes. He gives us a comprehensive account of the back-
ground, conventions, external and internal structure of Greek
tragedy with a minutely detailed exposition of the plays of
^Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. There is, perhaps, no single
book in English which covers this ground so thoroughly and with
such fullness of information for the general reader.
The most interesting passages of Professor Goodell are those
in which he is stirred to earnestness by the refutation of some
theory, such as that of Archer on the nature of the drama. Here
he is excellent, and, indeed throughout, he displays a commend-
able independence of judgment and a stanch conservatism even
in the presence of such formidable exponents of Greek Tragedy
as Freytag, Ridgeway, Gilbert Murray and Verrall. Yet the gen-
eral tone of Athenian Tragedy is restrained and professorial,
though not at all pedantic. The book is expository, satisfying with
full information, but outside of the successful controversies men-
tioned above and the fine analysis of Euripides' specific contribu-
tions to Athenian tragedy, the book rarely stirs the reader.
The rhapsody of Symond's Greek Poets was not to be ex-
pected, nor, in the space given to his subject, could the Yale pro-
fessor attempt to rival Weil and especially Patin. The crystal
248 NEW BOOKS [May,
pregnancy of French criticism is not often reached. Rare is such
criticism as : "A fundamental character of Athenian tragedy, as of
Greek art universally, is relative simplicity and perspicuity in the
larger masses with exquisite proportion and minute variation in
details, which are never made so conspicuous as to withdraw at-
tention in the least from the larger masses." The whole para-
graph on page 111, setting forth imaginatively the analogy be-
tween the Parthenon and Greek tragedy, is splendid, and we be-
lieve that had not Professor Goodell so scrupulously burdened
himself with information and detail, he would have given us some-
thing far finer if not so encyclopedic.
If Greek literature is to be saved, it will be because of its
artistic form. Its form has made it live so far, and in its art lies
the immortality of Greek literature.
THE UNITED STATES IN OUR OWN TIMES, 1865-1920. By
Paul L. Haworth, Ph.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
$2.25 net.
This is a work well done and one that meets a long-felt want.
As Dr. Haworth aptly remarks, most of our present problems do
not take their origin earlier than the days of Lincoln, and to
understand them we should know the transitions that have taken
place during the past fifty-five years. This is a sane thesis, and
one that justifies a history that might otherwise be called frag-
mentary. We have attained that degree in the development of
our nation where distinct periods are becoming visible. It is,
therefore, perfectly proper, and in this particular instance, very
profitable, that any such clearly defined epoc be treated separately
and, consequently, more fully.
With this in mind, the author begins his review with the sur-
render of Lee, and carries it down through the comparatively
recent date of Lansing's resignation from Wilson's cabinet.
The account of the recent War, would of itself make the
book worth while. Outside of the intrinsic value of its presenta-
tion of fact, the most attractive feature of the book is its readable-
ness. It is a work worth having and worth reading, too.
THE CHRISTIAN MIND. By Dom Oscar Vonier, O.S.B. St.
Louis: B. Herder Book Co. $1.50 net.
"Ever so many Christians," writes Abbot Vonier, "even
amongst those who profess piety and possess education, shape
their thoughts and order their lives on principles that have no
direct relationship with the central fact of Christianity, the In-
carnate Son of God."
1921.] NEW BOOKS 249
His aim, therefore, in these original and suggestive pages,
is to bring out clearly and vividly the true psychology bred in a
Christian through a practical assimilation of the wondrous truths
of the Incarnation. In his use of the word, "mind" is both a view
and a behavior. It is something more than character, as it implies
a relish and a keenness for wide views, a thing not necessarily com-
bined in character. The volume is really a series of nineteen con-
ferences on the text of St. Paul: "For to me, to live is Christ; and
to die is gain" (Phil. i. 21). It is a blending both of spiritual pos-
sibilities, such as the Incarnation may produce, and of the spir-
itual activities, such as It did produce in St. Paul.
Some of the best chapters treat of the true attitude of the
Christian mind towards death, the souls in purgatory, eternal life,
the Church and the Eucharist. Unfortunately, his pessimistic
theory on the small number of the saved, seems to contradict the
thesis of the entire volume.
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION. By John A. Ryan, D.D., LL.D.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
This is a series of lectures on the general subject of the
Bishops' Programme of Reconstruction given by Dr. Ryan at the
Fordham School of Sociology in 1919 and 1920. It is a matter for
congratulation that Dr. Ryan has made these lectures thus widely
available. Any authoritative and capable expansion of the points
summarized in the Bishops' Programme would be eagerly welcomed.
We are doubly blessed in having the exposition come from one
who is preeminently qualified by his grasp of the subjects dealt
within the Programme, and his close association with the prepara-
tion of the document itself, to explain more fully the necessity and
feasibility of the several lines of action urged by the Bishops.
And the book is admirably adapted to spreading an intelligent
understanding of the moral and economic principles on which the
Programme is based. One need not be an advanced student of
moral theology or of the social sciences to follow Dr. Ryan's
thought. The language is untechnical and the style direct, clear
and informal.
Not the least interesting or valuable of the chapters is the
first, in which Dr. Ryan tells of the occasion of the issue of the
Programme and of the reception accorded it, and answers those
critics who attempted to dismiss it as a statement of personal
views, rather than an expression of the thought of the American
bishops as a group. Dr. Ryan does not refer, as he might well
have done, to the reiteration in the Pastoral Letter drawn up
by the hierarchy in September, 1919, of the proposals in the
250 NEW BOOKS [May,
sphere of industrial relations contained in the Bishops' Pro-
gramme.
Some of the policies included in the Programme and, conse-
quently discussed at some length by Dr. Ryan, seem now, unhap-
pily, to have been relegated to the category of things no longer of
public interest. To some the reasons advanced in favor of the re-
tention of the federal employment service and the War Labor
Board, to cite two examples, are of as little present moment as the
arguments in the Dred Scott case. Yet the points urged in favor
of retaining these agencies have not lost their pertinence, because
they have been overlooked by those who rule us.
The Programme also opposed a general reduction of wages to
pre-War levels in terms of purchasing power. Attempts to reduce
wages even more than in proportion to the fall in retail prices are
the order of the day. Many railroad companies, to take a con-
spicuous example, have proposed reductions of the wages of the
more poorly paid classes of workers to a rate as low as thirty
cents an hour, and have advanced in support of their proposals
the statement that in other employments the wages of similar
groups have already been brought that low. What they ask is
that we return to the familiar principle, or rather unprincipled
practice, of making the bargaining weakness of the worst-off
workers the determinant of their wages. The arguments from
Christian principles and sound economics against the revaluation
of labor on such a pagan basis are well stated in this book.
The limitations of the volume arise largely from its purposes.
One cannot expect a series of popular lectures covering so many
topics to furnish a systematic exposition of the economic forces
at work or an exhaustive explanation of the ways in which these
may be modified in their operation, and so guided as to bring
about and secure the continuance of the results which moral ob-
ligations require shall be secured. The discussion of some of the
topics is admittedly inadequate. For example, the chapters on
"Labor Sharing in Managament" and "Co-Partnership and Coop-
eration" would be more convincing if the positive functions and
financial risk that are inseparable from ownership in our complex
industrial order were specifically recognized, and it were shown
how these could be assumed by the workers. There are points,
too, in his treatment of present conditions on which Dr. Ryan's
appraisals may be challenged by some as based on incorrect in- -
formation or incomplete evidence. However, these judgments are
not propounded in dogmatic fashion, but frankly offered as neces-
sitated by the facts as they appear.
The shortcomings of the volume, when its purposes are re-
1921.] NEW BOOKS
251
membered, are minor and incidental. It is a highly serviceable
contribution. It is concerned in the main with principles that
are enduring and issues that are still before us, and likely to de-
mand our attention for years to come. The book should not be
passed over by anyone who is honestly anxious to advance by in-
telligent advocacy the application of Catholic principles to our
troublesome industrial problems.
NATURALISM IN ENGLISH POETRY. By Stopford A. Brooke.
New York: E. P. Button & Go. $3.00.
These posthumously collected lectures and essays of Dr. Stop-
ford Brooke make up a highly instructive, if uninspired, volume
of criticism. The various papers cover a definite and important
epoch in English literature the return to "naturalism" or nature
love, beginning with the revolt from Pope and Dryden and cul-
minating in the work of Wordsworth. Within his own definite
limitations of sympathy (limitations which permit him to com-
ment upon the religious poets of seventeenth century England
without reference to Crashaw, and to consider Shelley quite
seriously as a defender of Christian faith ! ) Dr. Brooke is a sound
scholar. But it is an open question whether almost every subject
in the present collection has not been more interestingly treated
by greater critics. Certainly one cannot forget Matthew Arnold
and Walter Pater's interpretation of many of these poets while
Francis Thompson's electrifying treatise upon Shelley long ago
joined the ranks of the classics.
CALIFORNIA TRAILS. An Intimate Guide to the Old Missions.
By Trowbridge Hall. New York: The Macmillan Co. $5.00.
The story of the Franciscan missions of California has been
told over and over again, but there is always an interest in the
telling, whether one has visited them all from South to North like
the present writer, or whether one sits at home and dreams of
one day making that sacred pilgrimage. For a thorough account
of their history, read the five stout volumes of that scholarly
and saintly Franciscan, Father Engelhardt of Santa Barbara, but
for an entertaining guide book, well illustrated, we commend
the chatty and interesting volume under review.
Mr. Hall, is, as he himself says, a saunterer like a pilgrim
to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages although, not being a Cath-
olic, he cannot grasp perfectly the work of Junipero Serra and his
valiant companions. His traveling companions are Imagination,
Sympathy and Understanding, and they help him to tell the old
story of the Missions with reverence and appreciation.
252 NEW BOOKS [May,
THE GREATEST FAILURE IN ALL HISTORY. By John Spargo.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
This is a book that grew out of the collection of material on
the workings of Bolshevism in Russia. Mr. Spargo, as is well
known, is a Socialist who believes that Bolshevism is a crime
against Socialism. In the preface he says that Bolshevism is "a
vicious and dangerous form of reaction, subversive of every form
of progress and every agency of civilization," "a monstrous and
arrogant tyranny." He believes that his book proves his case.
Starting with no intention of writing a sensational book, he thinks
it even worse "a terrible book," terrible because of the cumula-
tive effect of the scenes and deeds in Bolshevik Russia, the
tyranny and the outraged ideals that it depicts. Step by step the
Soviets are described the electoral system, the treatment of the
peasants, the terror, industry in Russia, nationalization and the
method of management, the rights of the press and assembly, and
labor conscription. The most telling parts of the book deal with
the more fundamental parts of Bolshevism the position of the
individual in relation to the conditions of his livelihood and in
relation to the State.
FATHER ALLAN'S ISLAND. By Amy Murray. New York: Har-
court, Brace & Howe. $2.50.
Eriskay, better known to the Gaelic fishermen of the Hebrides
as Father Allan's Island, lies in the Atlantic to the northwest of
Scotland. There Miss Murray spent six months of a glorious
summer in her search for the folk-songs of the Gael. With
Father Allan as mentor and guide, she was able to jot down
thirty of the most characteristic melodies, a most difficult task
as she herself says: "To set down such ways (of singing) is to
deal as it were with the wind in its liltings and in its long whis-
perings among the quicken-leaves, and with the mouthings of the
brook in pebbly places. One comes in time to make a good shot
at the pitch and intervals bearing always in mind that the tone
is rather that of speech than of song. The puzzle is where to be
putting in your bars."
Although not a Catholic herself, she writes most sympathet-
ically of Father Allan and his people. She admires their sim-
plicity, their faith, their purity, their, devotion at Mass, their
austerities, their patience, their kindliness. Above them all looms
the figure of Father Allan, a true Gael, bespeaking the super-
natural in his every word and action, and an ardent lover of his
people their customs, their songs, their piety.
Miss Murray writes of the legends of the Gael in a language
1921.] NEW BOOKS
253
borrowed from the fishermen of the isles quaint, lyrical, rhyth-
mical, and Gaelic to the core. Surely, the Catholics on the edge
of the world are praying for her conversion.
ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS. By W. H. Hudson. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $4.00.
It is too late in the day to say much about the work of W. H.
Hudson. He has long been recognized as the greatest living
master of the fine art of English prose. Conrad once said of him :
"Hudson writes as the grass grows; the good God made it to bo
there." And he is the supreme biographer of birds, perhaps the
greatest living ornithologist. Adventures Among Birds is a group
of wonderfully vivid and exquisite studies. Hudson treats of
"Bird Music," of "The Immortal Nightingale," of "Avalon and a
Blackbird." Perhaps these three chapters are the most beautiful
of the twenty-seven; but every page is pure joy, and bears the
mark of the master-artist.
MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT. By Glenn Ward Dresbach.
Boston : The Four Seas Co.
This slim little volume contains as delightful verse as we have
seen in some time. The adjective, "modern," attached to a poet
has developed a strange connotation; no longer is he one who
views life and views it whole; rather does he view a small cross-
section of the seamy side of life through a microscope fitted with
a blue lens, giving to airy nothings, so to speak, a local habitation
in Spoon Biver. A poet need be no less a poet because he lays
bare the hidden springs of human weakness, as Crabbe proved
long since. But when a reader tired of the rude manners and
unbridled passions of Crabbe's smugglers and poachers, he could
turn to Burns or Cowper, later to Coleridge or Wordsworth, for
relief. So, on ears that are wearied by the excessive blatancy of
so much of modern literature, occasionally falls the clear cool
notes of one singing that poetry of earth which never dies, and an
avenue of escape is opened from the thronging cares of life.
Such notes are struck in most of Mr. Dresbach's work; his
few sallies into realism are less happy. He has a real gift for the
singing line in which the sense is borne along on the lilt of the
meter, and a true eye for color. He sings of nature and of love;
the trees make melody for him that stir an answer in his heart,
and all nature speaks to him of the loved one. There is an occa-
sional strain reminiscent of the War, but surprisingly little, con-
sidering that Mr. Dresbach served as captain in the Sanitary
Corps. Most of the poems are written in the old traditional
254 NEW BOOKS [May,
meters, and there are several in blank verse. An interesting fea-
ture is a series of four sonnets: "To the Night Wind," written
according to the Shakesperean rhyme-scheme, a form rarely seen.
This present volume is Mr. Dresbach's third wooing of the Muse,
and, if his previous ventures reach the same standard, he has
assembled a body of lyrical verse which entitles him to serious
consideration among the poets of the rising generation.
JAILED FOR FREEDOM. By Doris Stevens. New York: Boni
& Liveright.
One wonders at times how woman suffrage became a fait
accompli how the nineteenth amendment was written into our
organic law. You may have your own opinions of the psychology of
the thing. If you have, be prepared to give them up. Miss Stevens
will soon convince you that the dominating cause that brought
about the "emancipation" of women was the work of that militant
group headed by Miss Paul and herself who picketed the White
House and served terms in prison for their activities.
Her story is a most interesting one. It is a vivid narration of
the suffragists' activities from the early days of Wilson's first
administration until Tennessee ratified the amendment. It glori-
fies the work of the women who had the courage to suffer for their
convictions; it shows you the enthusiasm and fervor of a crusad-
ing host, unselfish, noble, envisioned. It tells you of a wondrous
moral victory the casting off of the shackles of womankind.
One must not take Miss Steven's book too seriously. Its title
shows the futility of this. While we must appreciate its peculiar
value in showing the suffrage mind and the psychological reac-
tions of the militant suffragist, we cannot but smile at its absurd-
ity. Perhaps, even, there is reason also to condemn it. The un-
warranted conduct and false philosophy of these agitators would
surely justifiy this. Still its bombosity, its lop-sided logic and
its neurasthenic femininity incline one more to smiling charity
than biting contempt.
ENSLAVED. By John Masefield. $2.50.
RIGHT ROYAL. By John Masefield. New York: The Macmillan
Co. $1.75.
Apparently John Masefield writes his verse with ease and
rapidity. The second of these two volumes was published so soon
after the first that it found its way to the reviewer's desk only a
few days later. One may surely question if such rapidity of
production ultimately makes for work of enduring quality. The
Enslaved volume contains besides the title poem and some
others a group of sonnets; "The Passing Strange" (a beautiful
1921.] NEW BOOKS 255
poem which attracted much admiration upon its recent publica-
tion in the Yale Review); and the exquisite "On Growing Old."
Right Royal is a wonderfully vivid and exciting description in
verse of a horse race. Enslaved is a thrilling, but sadly unequal,
description of an attempted escape from Moorish captivity. In
both poems one notices examples of Mr. Masefield's ancient fond-
ness for archaic, and sometimes Wardour Street, diction, and
some of his lines are just plain prose. In Right Royal, e. g., the
line: "Do not exaggerate the risks I run." But this poem is not
without moments of the old Masefield magic :
She was the very May-time that comes in
When hawthorns bud and nightingales begin.
To see her tread the red-tippt daisies white
Was to believe Queen Venus come again.
WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA. By George Lansbury. New York:
Boni & Liveright.
In giving this title to his record of a visit to Russia, Mr. Lans-
bury opens himself to both a quip and a congratulation. As H. G.
Wells has recently observed, the Soviet Government has a sort of
tourists' route for friendly visitors to Russia, and one sees what
the Government wishes him to see. On the other hand, the title
is a guarantee of good faith. We have had too many books of
hearsay on Russia. However misguided Mr. Lansbury may seem
to many people, his sincerity, ardor and persistent religious faith
are not to be questioned. If what he saw in Russia makes merely
a rosy picture of a vast national brotherhood, the blame cannot
be laid to Mr. Lansbury, but to the canny Soviet leaders.
By far the most interesting pages are devoted to personal
interviews with Lenine and other leaders. Like Gorky, Lansbury
looks upon Lenine as a sort of angel of light, tender as a woman.
Of the leaders, he is about the only one who is living the life of
discipline imposed upon the proletariat. The Soviet attitude to-
ward such moderates as Kropotkin is the attitude one assumes
toward a weak brother. Kropotkin and the Tolstoyans, by the
way, are very scornful of the Soviet Government and its methods.
Mr. Lansbury's observations on trade and business are rather
confused. It is difficult to find from him just where the cooper-
ative movement of the old days stands under the present system
of national trade union. Certainly the Soviet has instituted some
remarkable reforms for the benefit of the workman and his
family. Education is going ahead at a remarkable rate, if we
count schools and lecture courses as education.
But and here one stops to wonder what is holding all this
256 NEW BOOKS [May,
theoretical fabric of government together? These vast schemes
for public health? This government education? These maternity
homes? And all the hundred and one activities. What supports
them? And how long can they last? How long will the people of
Russia permit themselves all to be classed as equals?
What Mr. Lansbury saw makes a thrilling picture of great
promise. And yet, and yet, one cannot accept it whole. Some-
thing is lacking from the picture stability, sanity and freedom.
One looks at this beautiful scene, not aware of the storm clouds
in the zenith. But close the book, and upon the mind flashes the
image of Terrorism. That, apparently, is what Mr. George Lans-
bury failed to see in Russia.
TRESSIDER'S SISTER. By Isabel C. Clarke. New York: Ben-
ziger Brothers. $2.50.
Like all of Miss Clarke's novels, this book has the pronounced
virtues of a "best seller." The story is well and interestingly told;
it is free from subtleties; there is plenty of dialogue in which
the characters are made, not too ostentatiously, to reveal their
own virtues and defects, the heroine is beautiful, the end is
thrilling.
But superadded to these qualities Miss Clarke's novels are
always what best sellers are not always irreproachably moral,
and they are always what best sellers are never strongly, splen-
didly, and compellingly Catholic. This great virtue glorifies the
more ignoble traits of the best seller, and makes us welcome this
writer's stories as a wholesome counter-irritant to the often mis-
chievous sensational fiction craved by the adolescent.
A YEAR WITH CHRIST. By William J. Young, S.J. St. Louis :
B. Herder Book Co. $1.60.
In our present feverish economy, we seem to want our spirit-
uality, like our meals, in the midst of varied other activities. We
prefer a concise thought without too much verbiage, a mere hint
without a too leisurely development. This book caters to the
demand. It chooses just one salient idea from the Gospel of each
Sunday of the year, and makes that the subject of a three minute
reading. It does not intend a sermon analysis, nor yet a thorough
treatment of even this one aspect of the Gospel. Its purpose is
suggestive rather than exhaustive; it furnishes the starting-point,
whence new thoughts may arise and new lessons be developed.
Best of all, the book teaches Christ as He is variously portrayed in
the Ecclesiastical Year, and shows in a vigorous way how He can
be made the inspiration of our daily lives.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 257
THE STORY EVER NEW. By Rev. James Higgins. New York:
The Macmillan Go. $1.12.
The knowledge and through knowledge, love of Jesus
cannot be too early inculcated into the minds of children. It is
the basis of our catechism, and yet it is often crowded out by our
too great insistence on mere memory work. This simple story of
the life of Jesus, is designed to parallel the catechism study, and
for that reason is cast into the form of a textbook. Every child
loves a story, especially when it contains conversation : hence, the
use of this little book of stories will help much to arrest the
wavering attention during the period of religious instruction.
The Gospel narrative is followed closely, only such changes being
made as tend towards simplicity and a clearer understanding.
Since the book is for class use, after each section, to test the
knowledge of the pupils, "Questions on the Text" are introduced;
for the inspiration of the teacher, are subjoined, suggestive "Cor-
related Studies." The Notes on the Text, compiled from various
approved sources, are especially good, and should be illuminative
for the teacher. It might be suggested that, in future editions,
the pronunciation of proper names be indicated.
ANDREW JACKSON AND EARLY TENNESSEE HISTORY. By
S. G. Heiskell. Nashville: Ambrose Printing Co. $10.00.
Mr. Heiskell, newspaperman and son of a pioneer journalist
of Knoxville, has written an interesting, intimate relation of early
Tennessee, affording valuable sidelights on the settlement of the
State, and presenting curious information concerning the early
pioneers and founders. There is a desire to give proper place
to Tennessee leaders in our national annals, and to portray a
more rounded life of Andrew Jackson by showing the General in
his home and among his neighbors. Much space is given to
Jackson and his friends, along with a minute description of the
Hermitage. All local material is compiled regarding Boone, Gen-
eral James White, builder of Knoxville, Senator William Blount
and his expulsion from the United States Senate for western in-
trigues, the Cherokee nation and their removal, John Sevier and
his descendants, General Evan Shelby, the Indian fighter, Major
William Lewis, confidant of Jackson, the beginnings of Memphis,
Samuel Houston, and James K. Polk. There is a reference to Dr.
James White, a member of Congress from Tennessee, who re-
moved to Louisiana, where his son, Edward D. White, was to
serve as a member of Congress and governor (1835-39), and from
whose bar his grandson was to be elevated to the chief justiceship
of the Supreme Court. One finds John Sevier's incomplete
VOL. CXIII. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [May,
Washington journal (1812-15) of some interest, especially his
frequent attendance at the Catholic church, while apparently
never attending any other service on those Sundays for which he
accounted.
Mr. Heiskell's work will meet with favor among local his-
torians and genealogists, and, if used, may aid in a more correct
appreciation of the national importance of Tennessee's favorite
sons. The volumes could be better arranged, although they are
superior to the usual local history.
A STUDY OF POETRY. By Bliss Perry. Boston: Houghton Mif-
flin Co. $3.25.
In this volume Professor Bliss Perry has provided the student
with a competent and gracefully written discussion of poetry and
aesthetics. He has treated sympathetically and skillfully such topics
as "The Impulses to Artistic Production," "Imagist Verse," and
"The Nature of Rhythm." The purely technical part of the book
is also excellent, though here Professor Perry is traveling along a
well-worn path. Teachers will find simply invaluable the very
thorough appendix, in which the author prints a careful model
topical outline for the study of a poet, selecting Tennyson as his
poetic corpus vile. Several of the very young American poets
could do worse than read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the
contents of this useful and scholarly manual.
ENGLAND IN TRANSITION. By William Law Mathieson. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $6.00.
The reaction brought about by the French Revolution pro-
foundly affected Europe both socially and politically. The
evidences of that reaction in England furnish Dr. Mathieson with
a theme full of interest, and he has handled it in excellent fashion.
He knows intimately the period of which he writes (1789-1832),
and appreciates thre great forces that were genuinely at work to
modernize England, and to permit the triumph of the Reform
Movement.
Dr. Mathieson tells fascinatingly of the struggle to purify the
election system, to abolish the slave traffic, to banish various
brutal practices, and his narrative brings out vividly the power of
the reactionaries who affected to find in every movement for bet-
terment a menace to the stability of the constitution. Pope Leo X.
had denounced slavery as an outrage on "not the Christian re-
ligion only, but human nature itself," but not until centuries had
passed, was it possible to get Protestant England to destroy the
terrible traffic by act of Parliament. Not the least interesting pages
of Dr. Mathieson's book recount the sufferings of the chimney
1921.] NEW BOOKS
259
sweeps, some of whom were but four or live years of age, since
only such infants were able to penetrate chimneys seven inches
square. The author of Utopia had inveighed against the brutal
punishment of even minor offences by death but in vain. In the
year, 1819, two hundred and twenty-three crimes were regarded
as capital. The public conscience rebelled against such injustice,
and the great fight led by Sir James Mackintosh to "make the
punishment fit the crime," for which More had pleaded, finally
ended in success.
Admirers of Wordsworth and Coleridge will learn with sur-
prise that they joined Southey in protesting against Catholic
Emancipation, while Nonconformists and Quakers supported the
Catholics, as well as a large majority of the practising barristers
of London.
The sidelights we gain upon the leaders of the time, such as
Castlereagh, Wellington, Canning, and Earl Grey, make them very
real and help to lend vivid reality to Dr. Mathieson's brilliant
volume.
THE STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA. By Charles Domville-Fife.
New York : The Macmillan Co. $5.00.
GLIMPSES OF SOUTH AMERICA. By F. A. Sherwood. New
York: The Century Co. $4.00.
The first of these books is a radical revision of an earlier
work of the same title. The scope of the present volume has been
extended to include all the States of South America, and its pur-
pose is said to be the furnishing of a compendium of information
on the commercial and financial possibilities of South America.
The book contains a great deal of useful information, but
much of it is of the sort that would appeal only to the paid lec-
turer who deals with generalities. There is a dearth of statistical
information and detail of the sort looked for by investors and
traders, although it seems intended as a guide-book for the British
banker and merchant. Throughout the volume the author hints
rather strongly that British conservative methods must be changed
to meet the ways of aggressive Americans. It is rather refreshing
to have it put that way. We are more used to hearing that
Americans must copy English methods if they would succeed in
South America.
The book is well printed, and has a full index, but the illus-
trations are inferior. Some of these portray the beauties of the
South America of twenty years ago, and will seem a trifle gro-
tesque to travelers who have visited the continent since the
awakening that came with the dawn of the twentieth century.
260 NEW BOOKS [May,
Mr. Sherwood's book is a novel experiment, and the results
are rather pleasing. It contains some three hundred short
sketches of South American life, taken from the notebook of a
business man. It is full of good illustrations made from snap-
shots, and in this way it presents a very pleasing contrast to the
work noticed above.
The author is neither a profound thinker nor an uneducated
bigot; consequently, his point of view is different from what we
are accustomed to in books on South America. He sees South
American life through the curious, friendly eyes of the good-
natured American who sympathizes even when he does not under-
stand. He takes a gratuitous fling when he retails a story of a
statue of "Death" found in one of the churches in Lima. Since
his grammar leaves something to the imagination, the story can
best be given by a quotation : "It is said that the monk that carved
it died from seeing the completed statue in an attack of delirium
tremens. We saw this statue, and consider the report grossly
exaggerated and a base libel. In our opinion, there was no need
for him to have had the delirium tremens at all. If he did, it was
while he was carving the statue."
Mr. Sherwood has a good eye for detail so far as the surface
of life is concerned. He makes no attempt to philosophize, and
apparently knows nothing of the spiritual side of the South Amer-
icans. His book makes pleasant reading for an hour or so, and
will commend itself to hectic Americans who desire to break the
record for speed in circumnavigating South America.
The book has a beautiful appearance, as it is well printed on
excellent paper; and its style is so simple and natural that one
almosts forgives the many grammatical errors and slips in proof-
reading, and is content to be a commonplace and listen to a com-
monplace story of strange and wonderful places.
THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES. By Edwin Marshall. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co. $1.90.
The Strength of the Pines is an absorbing tale of life in the
open by Edwin Marshall, who gave us an exceptionally good Far
West story last year in The Voice of the Pack. The theme of his
latest novel, an Oregon mountain feud, gives him an excellent
chance to display his intimate and detailed knowledge of the wild
spots of the Oregon forests, and the ways of the wild creatures
that range them.
The hero, Bruce Duncan, is a city-bred man of mountain
stock who leaves his eastern home for the West in order to solve
the mystery of his parentage. In the Oregon woods he comes
1921.] NEW BOOKS 261
across Linde, the playmate of his childhood, who alone, for years,
had defied the Turners, the murderers of his father. The hero
and heroine form a compact, with love as the seal, to avenge
their parents' murders, and after many stirring adventures they
come out victors despite enormous odds.
"The Killer," an enormous grizzly, the last of his race on the
range, plays a most important role in the story. The hero is
rescued from his clutches at the last moment as he lies bound
and helpless in the forest, and the villain of the piece, by a happy
nemesis, meets his death in the Grizzly's last stand.
It is a good story, well told.
THE SPELL OF BRITTANY. By Ange M. Mosher. New York:
Duffield & Co. $3.00.
Mrs. Mosher has written a fascinating story of her travels
in Brittany for many years. Although not a Catholic, she learned
to love the Bretons, their history, their simple faith, their customs,
their folk lore, their legends of Mont St. Michel and good St. Yves.
She takes us with her on her journeyings from Vitre to Nantes,
touching at all the interesting towns and villages on the way
Les Rochers, St. Malo, Dinard, Dinan, Guincamp, Morlaix, Audi-
erne, Quimper, Carnac, Ploermel and Le Croisic. She describes
the chief shrines, churches and castles, gives us glimpses of a
Breton wedding and a Breton pilgrimage, tells countless legends
of the past, and gives brief and we must say inaccurate-
sketches of Brittany's writers and heroes Madame de Sevigne
Chateaubriand, Renan, De Lamennais, Briseux, Anne of Brittany.
The wars of La Vendee are mentioned in but a few lines, whereas
the fight of these Catholic peasants against the Revolution might
have added many a vivid page to her history. Her spirit is most
kindly and devoid of prejudice, but she has no understanding of
the teaching of a De Lamennais, and no idea of the harm done to
France by the sneering unbelief of Renan. Anatole Le Braz writes
a most eulogistic introduction, in which he calls the writer an
honor to her sex and humanity.
THE PRELIMINARY ECONOMIC STUDIES OF THE WAR, recently
gotten out by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(New York: Oxford University Press), are: "Prices and Price Control
in Great Britain and the United States during the World War" and
"Early Effects of the War Upon the Finance, Commerce and Industry of
Peru," by L. S. Rowe. The Division of International Law has given us
the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Reported by James
Madison. The editors of this valuable contribution to American His-
torv are Gaillard Hunt and James Brown Scott. The Project of a
262 NEW BOOKS [May,
Permanent Court of International Justice and Resolutions of the
Advisory Committee of Jurists, is put out by the same division with
"Report and Commentary," by James Brown Scott.
WORLD-WIDE unrest, like an autumnal wind among the leaves, has
stirred up many "reconstructive messages." The Neiv World,
by Frank Comerford (New York: D. Appleton & Go. $2.00 net), is
a problem-volume devoted to a portrayal of Bolshevism, both in theory
and action. Written by one who trailed this social serpent to its native
haunts, and later wielded the legal sword as special prosecutor of red
revolutionists in the State of Illinois, the nervous, newspapery style
of the book may be easily pardoned. Economic problems are indicated
rather than comprehensively discussed. Socialism and Bolshevism
are shown to be two tracks leading to one and the same civic derail-
ment. To guard the public against being deceived into taking passage
on either of these roads, collective bargaining and better methods of
adjusting labor difficulties are advocated.
The book is padded with appendices, in which the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution of the United States have their
gentlemanly proportions brought out in full contrast by being made to
brother with the ruffian Platforms and Manifestoes of the Communists.
FRINGE OF THE ETERNAL, by Rev. Francis Gonne (New
I York: Benziger Brothers. $2.00). The sorrows and the faith of
the Irish have found many portrayers, but perhaps none more sympa-
thetic, competent, and restrained than the Rev. Francis Gonne. He
knows what to see and he knows how to write. He makes the super-
natural real for us as it is for the dwellers on the West Coast; he
urges us, like them, to soften and purify our pains by joining them to
the Cross of Christ. In these twelve charming stories he continues
worthily the tradition of Monsignor Benson and Miss Dease.
MEDITATIONS ON THE LITANY OF THE SACRED HEART
CULLED FROM THE WRITINGS OF JULIANA OF NORWICH,
by F. A. Forbes (New York: Benziger Brothers. 50 cents). No one
could read the Revelations of Divine Love by Juliana of Norwich, the
holy fourteenth century anchoress, without being warmed by the fire
which burned in her soul. Although in her day devotion to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus was not so prominent as now, yet it has been easy to
gather from her writings sentences which aptly aid that devotion, and
the ingenious author of this little book has to this end placed under
each of the titles of the Litany of the Sacred Heart short pithy quota-
tions, helpful in themselves and doubly useful if they send readers to
Iheir source.
FIRST COMMUNION DAYS, by a Sister of Notre Dame, illustrated by
Wilfred Pippett (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co. 75 cents), is a
companion volume to True Stories for First Communion, by the same
1921.] NEW BOOKS 263
author. The stories are very devotional, and are told simply and
pleasantly. Some of the child characters seem a hit overdrawn, and
are certainly unusual. The little volume has an attractive makeup.
WE have constantly urged upon Catholics the necessity of an intel-
ligent understanding of the Mysteries of our Holy Faith. The
perfect harmony and oneness of Catholic doctrine are in themselves
strong evidences for the truth of the whole. A book that strikingly
illustrates this is From the Trinity to the Eucharist, translated from
the French of Monseigneur Maurice Landrieux (St. Louis: B. Herder
Book Co. $1.30 net).
The explanation here given of what is meant by the Ever Blessed
Trinity and what is meant by another mystery, "The Blessed Euchar-
ist," will raise both our intelligence and our hearts to a greater appre-
ciation and a deeper love of God and of the ever present Incarnate
Christ.
ADAM OF DUBLIN, by Conal O'Riordan (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & Howe), is a picture of life, not as it ought to be, nor as
we would like to have it, but as, unfortunately, it too often is, seen
through the eyes of a Dublin gamin. The point of view is ingenious
and fresh and the interest well sustained, but a minute account of life
in the Dublin slums, however sincerely related, makes dreary reading.
There probably are people like the McFaddens in Dublin as in any
large city of the world, but what end is served by exposing their sordid
lives to pitiless publicity? There may even be priests like Father
Tudor, for the priestly character could, theoretically, coexist with the
savage cruelty which is his chief characteristic; but if the author has
met even one such in real life, his experience has been singularly
unfortunate. Charity prompts us not to inquire too closely into the
motives behind his attitude to Catholic faith and practice; there is one
instance of blasphemy which is indefensible. It may be readily under-
stood that, though the story centres around a small boy between his
seventh and twelfth years, the book is in no sense a "juvenile."
TALKS FOR THE LITTLE ONES, by a Religious of the Holy Child
Jesus, suggests to the child thoughts and prayers conducive to a
more intimate approach to Our Lord in Holy Communion and Holy
Mass, and to the Blessed Mother and the Holy Angels. Written by one
whose vocation familiarizes her with the child, it is suited to the com-
prehension of the child mind and to its gradual development in piety.
(London : Catholic Truth Society.)
FROM The International Catholic Truth Society we have a new
edition in paper of Rev. Daniel Lyons' valuable book, Christianity
and Infallibility: Both or Neither. This should make it accessible to
the many and enhance its usefulness.
IRecent Events.
Despite the fact that Germany won Upper
Germany. Silesia on March 21st by a large majority,
representing something like sixty-five per
cent, of the total poll, detailed results later showed that the Poles
had carried the most important communes. The final vote as an-
nounced by the Inter-Allied commission was: Germany, 716,408;
Poland, 471,406. On the other hand statistics indicate a majority
of fifty-two per cent, in the industrial district, which was the prin-
cipal bone of contention. The industrial district, in the south-
eastern part of Upper Silesia, comprises about one-third of the
disputed territory. In Zaborze, Beuthen, Kattowitz and Konig-
shiitte, around which are located steel and other manufactories,
in addition to zinc and lead mines, the Poles cast approximately
twenty-two per cent, of the votes, while in the country districts
adjoining these four cities and bearing the same names, the Poles
claim fifty-five per cent, of the votes. In the districts of Rynik
and Pless, which contain coal mines of considerable importance,
the Poles contend that they cast respectively sixty-five per cent,
and seventy-eight per cent, of the vote.
The view is put forward in authoritative quarters that the
Allies will have to resort to partition instead of deciding the status
of the whole province by the total vote. It is expected that to
each country will be given the districts where they obtained a
substantial majority, except small areas where geographical dif-
ficulties are in the way. These areas, together with those where
the voting was close, will have to be allotted in a spirit of com-
promise. If this policy is pursued, it will mean roughly that the
north and west of the province will go to Germany and the south
to Poland. In the east the territory probably will be divided. The
French Government takes the stand that Upper Silesia should be
divided in accordance with the results of the voting, and accord-
ing to this view, Poland would get eighty per cent, of the mineral
resources of the disputed territory. Against this proposal the
German Government has protested, and on April 8th delivered to
the French Foreign Office a lengthy document arguing that the
whole of Upper Silesia be given to Germany. The same note has
been sent to the English, Italian and Japanese Governments.
Under the terms of the Peace Treaty the Allied Supreme Council
must decide the boundaries between Poland and Germany in this
district before April 21st.
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 265
Towards the end of March a series of Communist disorders
and strikes broke out in a number of the great industrial cities
in central Germany. Communist workers seized the city admin-
istration buildings in Hamburg, and in Leipsic, Dresden, Rode-
wisch, Halle, and other cities, directed their efforts against court-
houses, city halls, public banks and police headquarters. The
disorder was particularly violent at Eisleben, where the Com-
munists were in control for twenty-four hours. The riots raged
for over a week, with nmmerous casualties, and spread to Berlin,
where a series of dynamite explosions occurred. Finally, upris-
ings broke out in Rheinhausen, Moers, and Crefield in the Bel-
gian zone of occupation. In this region the Belgian troops suc-
ceeded in quelling the disturbance, and the German police re-
stored order in the other regions. The persistent campaign of
agitation carried on by the Red Flag, a Soviet organ in Germany,
the proclamations published by Communist papers in different
cities calling on the workers to rise against the present Govern-
ment, and Bolshevik documents that have fallen into the hands
of the authorities, lend color to the belief that the disorders were
planned in Moscow and carried out through a central directing
power in Berlin.
On April 2d the Council of Ambassadors completed the dif-
ficult task of drawing the customs line between occupied Ger-
many and the rest of the country, which was one of the London
reparation penalties. The measure has considerable political, as
well as economic, importance. Unoccupied Germany must pay to
the Allies a levy upon all it receives from the great industrial
districts under Allied control. Duties also are levied on every-
thing passing from the unoccupied Rhineland into Germany. The
machinery set up is extremely complicated and subject to many
readjustments. The new tariff line is five hundred kilometers
long. It does not exactly follow the Rhine because of adminis-
tration difficulties, but in general will be just within the military
occupation line, including Duesseldorf and other German towns
recently seized by Allied troops. The Director of Rhine customs
will have his office at Coblenz, and there will be established some
seventy-five customs offices.
In retaliation big manufacturers and mine owners in Rhenish
provinces have started a movement at Miinster to boycott all Eng-
lish, French and Belgian products. The Hansa League, also, a
central organization for the German wholesale trade, and the
Hamburg Retail Dealers' Association have joined the boycott,
pledging their members not to buy or sell Entente products, and
to start an agitation among their customers to the same end.
266 RECENT EVENTS [May,
In addition to these measures the German Government has,
on two different occasions, sent notes to the Secretariat of the
League of Nations protesting against the presence of French
troops and the exercise by them of military jurisdiction in the
Sarre territory. Germany considers these measures contrary to
the Versailles Treaty, and demands that the protest be sent to the
members of the League. The protest has been transmitted to the
Council of the League.
Premier Briand, as President of the Council of Ambassadors
has notified Berlin that the Allies will not consider the German
note of March 26th, asking that pending questions of German
disarmament be submitted to arbitration. In this note Germany
also refused to disarm the forts on the eastern frontier, and al-
leged that the Allies had miscalculated the amount of arms still
to be turned over. M. Briand's note says that these questions
were all settled by the Allies on January 29th, and calls on Ger-
many to fulfill the demands or take the consequences.
Rumors are to the effect that conversations have recently
been under way between Paris and London relative to possible
occupation of the whole Ruhr Valley, should Germany not agree
to an acceptable reparation accord on May 1st, or shortly subse-
quent to that date, when the Reparations Commission will notify
Berlin of the total indemnity account. It is estimated that about
250,000 troops will be needed for this purpose, and it appears
likely that the burden of this military effort would almost, if not
entirely, fall upon France, as London is reported to have given
little encouragement to a request for considerable material assist-
ance. On the other hand, London is said to be disposed to give
full moral support to further military action should Germany con-
tinue recalcitrant.
On April 4th, President Millerand signed a decree, increasing
the tariff on practically all manufactured goods imported from
Germany by anything from one hundred to three hundred per
cent. The effect of the new law will be to kill importations of
manufactured goods from Germany to France, which reached a
high figure last year and has been steadily increasing.
Early in April, the German Government exchanged notes
"informally" with the new Administration at Washington regard-
ing the German proposal to assume part of the Allied debt to the
United States. In reply, Secretary of State Hughes ignored the
loan question and notified the German Government that the
United States Government stood with the Allies in holding Ger-
many responsible for the War, and, therefore, morally bound to
make reparation to the extent of German ability to pay. Recog-
1921 -] RECENT EVENTS
267
nition of this obligation by Germany was declared to be the "only
sound basis on which can be built a firm and just peace, under
which the various nations of Europe can achieve once more
economic independence and stability."
It is expected abroad that this declaration of the American
Government will result in a renewal of negotiations between Ger-
many and the Allies, in an effort towards a definite acceptance by
Germany of a fixed plan for payment of reparations.
The German Army bill abolishing conscription and fixing the
strength of the army at 100,000 men and of the navy at 15,000
men, passed the Reichstag on March 19th. The Independent
Socialists and Communists voted against the measure.
The trial of "war criminals" before the Supreme Court at
Leipsic will probably commence at the beginning of May. Ac-
cording to the newspapers, the cases brought by the British Gov-
ernment will be taken up first, witnesses coming to Germany
from England to testify. Four cases have been set for trial, the
first being against a non-commissioned Landstrum officer, accused
of ill-treating British and French prisoners in an internment camp
in the Ruhr region.
With the exception of the direct measures
France. taken against Germany for fulfillment of
the Treaty previously referred to, the most
important news of the month has to do with the Allies' attitude
towards the American protest on the island of Yap and the
the British mandate for Mesopotamia. The definite refusal of the
United States Government to recognize the allocation of Yap, or
the validity of the mandate to Japan over former German islands
in the Pacific, was communicated in a note sent by Secretary of
State Hughes early in April to the British, French, Italian and
Japanese Governments.
The American contention is, that the right to dispose of the
overseas possessions of Germany was acquired "only through the
victory of the Allied and Associated Powers," and that the United
States participated in, and was largely responsible for that victory.
Hence, the conclusion is drawn that the right which accrued to
the Allied and Associated Powers through their common victory
over Germany, is "shared" by the United States, and there can be
no "valid or effective" disposition made of Germany's former
overseas possessions without American assent. This position har-
monizes with the stand taken by former Secretary of State Colby.
A significant feature of the Hughes' note is the disclosure that
former President Wilson, on March 3d, the day before he gave
268 RECENT EVENTS [May,
up office, went on record in opposition to the contentions of the
Japanese Government.
According to recent dispatches, the French Government,
which at first expressed a desire that a settlement be effected
between Washington and Tokio individually, appears to be swing-
ing toward support of the American attitude, and will probably
favor a review of the official Allied decision assigning Yap to
Japan. At the same time, it is held that the Allies are bound to
support Japan, but they would be relieved if she waived her
agreement on Yap.
The changed attitude of France on the Yap question is partly
ascribed to the fact of the mission of former Premier Viviani,
now in this country. The purpose of the mission is twofold: to
pay a visit of courtesy and to obtain and exchange information
mutually advantageous to France and to the United States. It is
evidently the hope of the French Government that, before he com-
pletes his American visit, M. Viviani will have obtained a true
understanding of the attitude of the United States towards world
problems, and will have succeeded in impressing upon this Gov-
ernment, the ardent desire of France to have America's moral
cooperation, at least, in the reconstruction of Europe.
The League of Nations on March 22d issued the text
of the mandates for the administration of Samoa by New
Zealand; of Nairu, or Pleasant Island, in the Pacific, a short
distance south of the equator, by Great Britain; of German South-
west Africa by the Union of South Africa, and of the former
German possessions in the Pacific, south of the equator, other
than Samoa and Nairu, by Australia. The mandatories are re-
quired to report to the League of Nations annually on the territory
under mandate, and the consent of the Council of the League is
required for any modification of the terms of the mandate.
The question of putting Austria once more on a stable finan-
cial basis, was considered by the Financial Committee of the
League at several meetings at the end of March. These meetings
were the result of the Allied policy laid down during the London
conference on March 17th, when the British Chancellor of
the Exchequer announced that the Allied Powers were prepared,
on certain conditions, to postpone payments due them from Aus-
tria under the Treaty of Saint Germain, and also payment of
capital and interest on advances to Austria for relief. Among the
findings of the Committee is a proposal that long credits, for at
least twenty years, be established for Austria. The Committee
recommends that an internal loan be floated to cover the entire
existing budget deficit, thus making it possible to issue further
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 269
paper currency. Budget expenditures, it believes, should be re-
duced to a minimum. According to the proposal, the Committee
would control the use of sums realized through loans and credits,
and would have the trusteeship for the management of the Aus-
trian assets on behalf of the new lenders and the present creditors.
It also stipulates that no external loan is to be raised without the
Committee's assent.
Consideration of amendments to the Covenant of the League
of Nations, dealing with the organization and operation of the
League, is to be undertaken by a group of jurists named by the
Amendments Commission of the League. The Committee will re-
port its decisions at the meeting of the League Council in May.
The Spanish Government, early in April, signed the protocol
for the establishment of the International Court of Justice. This
makes the thirtieth country to sign. Bulgaria has authorized its
Minister at Berne to sign, the Dutch Government has sent noti-
fications that a bill ratifying the Government's adhesion to the
Court is shortly to be submitted to Parliament, and similar pro-
cedure for ratification is under way in several other countries.
On April 7th the Foreign Office dispatched to Ambassador
Jusserand, for the information of Washington, a memorandum
setting forth what has been accomplished by France through the
expenditure of 35,000,000,000 francs to repair the damage in the
devastated regions, towards which Germany, to date, has made
no payment. In 1914 the population of the invaded regions was
4,700,000. At the time of the armistice this had fallen to 1,900,000.
Today the population is 4,100,000. Of the land devastated by the
Germans, ninety-five per cent, has been restored to good condition,
and, at present, slightly more than eighty per cent, is under actual
cultivation. Of all the factories destroyed in northern France,
fifty per cent, have resumed operation in new or repaired plants.
Ninety-nine and one-half per cent, of the destroyed railroad mile-
age is again in use. Eighty per cent, of the works of art damaged
have been restored. The vast majority of private homes, however,
have not been rebuilt, as it has been the French policy to recon-
struct first the means of production.
The chief events of the month in Russia
Russia. have been along lines of negotiation for
trade resumption, beginning on March 16th
with the signing of the trade agreement between Great Britain and
Russia. The agreement is essentially the same as the draft taken
to Moscow by Leonid Krassin, the Soviet Minister of Trade and
Commerce in January, and provides for the elimination of all
270 RECENT EVENTS [May,
hostile propaganda. The Soviet Government also agrees to recog-
nize, in principle, debts to private persons for goods or services.
Severe criticism of the agreement has been expressed both in
England and in foreign countries, the general view being that it
had its origin in political expediency, both English and Russian:
that the question of trade was distinctly secondary. Under this
aspect it is considered that Lenine wished to make use of the
prestige gained from an agreement with Great Britain, the bul-
wark of conservatism, to further his international revolutionary
ideas, and that Lloyd George was seeking to relieve the pressure
of affairs in the British possessions in the Near East and Middle
Asia. The general opinion is that there is no immediate prospect
of trade with Russia, an opinion borne out by the report of a dele-
gation of English business men, who shortly before the signing
had been sent to Copenhagen to study the situation. Although the
agreement does not recognize the Soviet Government in the regu-
lar diplomatic sense of the word, it is nevertheless tantamount to
recognition of the de facto Government and is most likely, ac-
cording to the view held in well informed circles, to be soon fol-
lowed by a regular political treaty.
A few days after the signing of the British agreement, the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee addressed a communi-
cation to the American Government suggesting that negotiations
be started immediately for trade resumption between Russia and
the United States, and proposing to send a delegation to this coun-
try. On March 25th, Secretary of State Hughes replied, definitely
refusing even to consider entering into such relations, so long as
the present communistic economic system prevails in Russia.
The keynote of the American declaration was: that until the
United States Government received convincing evidence of the
consummation of fundamental changes in the political and eco-
nomic system in Russia, such as restoration of the right of private
property, protection to human life, recognition of the sanctity of
contracts and of the rights of individual pursuits, Washington
would ignore all appeals from Moscow.
An interesting sidelight on the general situation is afforded
by a recent report from Reval, Esthonia, that despite the new
trade agreement between Great Britain and Soviet Russia, the
largest proportion of the extremely small amount of goods enter-
ing Russia through Esthonia continues to be of American origin.
Reval has been considered the most important port of Russian
imports, but the official statistics published by the Esthonian
Government show that only 15,569 tons of goods were in transit
to Russia, through Esthonia, from January 1st to March 31st, or
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 271
about six average shiploads. During the same period no Russian
goods were exported through Esthonia. The latest issue of Eco-
nomic Life, published in Soviet Russia, says that, in February.
Russia imported 1,401,250 poods (about 25,271 tons) of all com-
modities, of which 1,261,000 poods were coal from the United
States, going to Archangel and Murmansk. The exports, it is
stated by the same publication, were only 132,575 poods (about
2,386 tons), including lumber to England and flax to Letvia.
In addition to the above negotiations, the draft of a Russo-
German trade agreement is reported to be complete and ready
for signature. The agreement provides for a continuance of the
present missions of both nations in Germany and Russia, to
which will be attached special representatives for trade. It is also
provided that the German trade representatives in Russia may
take over the economic interests of Germany in Russia, and
register all agreements made by Germans in Russian territory.
The properties in Russia of Germans, who have gone to thai
country on affairs covered by the agreement, will be inviolable.
The Norwegian Government has nominated a delegation to
negotiate for a trade agreement with Russia; and, according to a
special dispatch to Berlin, Russia and China have made an agree-
ment, forming the base for a coming trade treaty, Russia giving a
guarantee that Bolshevik propaganda will be stopped in China
and Chinese losses in Russia refunded.
On April 9th, the French Foreign Office gave out the details
of a Treaty signed in Moscow on March 16th by the Bolsheviki
and the Turks. Both parties to the Treaty make remarkable con-
cessions. The document comprises four principal points, as fol-
lows: The Russians recognize Constantinople as the capital of
Turkey. The Russians and Turks both demand an international
agreement, wherein all States bordering the areas in question will
be represented at a Conference for organizing the regime of the
Dardanelles and the Black Sea. The Turks will abandon Batum,
giving the port to Georgia, and they will recognize the autonomy
of Georgia. Armenia disappears, being divided up among
Georgia, Azerbeijan, and Turkey. The attitude of the Soviets in
abandoning the Muscovite claims to Constantinople, is considered
especially notable, as Russia was promised Constantinople in a
secret treaty early in the War, when the Russian people and army,
after their initial defeats, were clamoring for peace.
Soviet Russia and the Soviet Republic of White Russia have
signed a treaty, under which they become a single republic. In
future the two countries will have single Commissaries for War,
Marine, Economics, Foreign Trade, Finance, Public Works, Com-
272 RECENT EVENTS [May,
munications and Posts and Telegraphs. Dispatches last month
from Scandinavian sources had reported the formation of a demo-
cratic White Russian Republic, taking in the region around Minsk
and Vitebsk. The "White Ruthenians," in this district were said
to have proclaimed their independence from Soviet Russia, plan-
ning to assemble a Legislature in Vitebsk in May and later to
make Minsk their capital.
After months of negotiating and many false reports of peace,
a Treaty finally was signed on March 18th at Riga by representa-
tives of Russia, the Ukraine and Poland. The first four para-
graphs establish the Russian-Ukrainan-Polish frontier, covering
the present demarkation line and allowing for alterations under
which 3,000 square kilometers are ceded to Poland near Minsk
and the District of Polesia on the Ukrainian frontier. Under
the Treaty 30,000,000 gold rubles are to be paid to Poland by
Russia and Ukrainia within twelve months. The terms of the
Treaty are virtually the same as those of the preliminary draft,
except as concerns the amount to be paid by Russia. A strong
protest against the Treaty has been made by Alexander Kerensky,
former Prime Minister in the Provisional Government of Russia,
now in London, who terms the peace one of "oppression and
national subjection" so far as Russia is concerned.
A new constitution was adopted by Poland late in March,
and will go into effect as soon as the necessary legal machinery
is set in motion. It is expected that the present Parliament will
be dissolved in April, when it is believed the arrangements for
the election of a new Parliament under the Constitution will be
perfected. The Constitution, as it now becomes the fundamental
law of the land, provides for a Parliament comprising a House
and a Senate, the members of both of which shall be chosen by
popular vote, both men and women, twenty-one years of age,
being eligible to the franchise. The executive power is vested in
a President and a responsible Cabinet. The President will be
elected for a term of seven years by a National Assembly, com-
posed of the members of the House and the Senate. The President
may be a Catholic or a Protestant. He is Commander-in-Chief of
all the military forces in time of peace, but in the event of war
the responsibility shifts to the Minister of War, who is empow-
ered to appoint the commander of the army. Catholicism con-
tinues to be the leading faith of the country, but equal rights are
accorded to all religions. The relations between Church and
State will be legally defined by an agreement with the Vatican,
which is to be subject to ratification by the Parliament. The
Constitution provides for free, compulsory education in district
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
273
and municipal schools. Every citizen has the right to the use of
his own language, and a special bill ensures the free development
of the minority nationalities living in Poland. The different na-
tionalities are permitted to have their schools and teach their own
languages under Government supervision and with partial sup-
port by the State. Land reforms provided for, restrict the indi-
vidual ownership of large tracts, and all classes receive equal
rights in this respect. The care of orphans by the State is pro-
vided for, and night work by women and by children under
fifteen years of age is prohibited.
The fortress of Kronstadt, which had been in rebellion
against the Moscow Government, was captured by the Soviet
forces on March 17th. The Kronstadt garrison, consisting of be-
tween fifteen and sixteen thousand men, of whom ten thousand
were sailors, were forced to capitulate through the cutting off of
their food supplies. The Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt,
accompanied by General Kostovsky, leader of the revolutionists,
and over five thousand men succeeded in escaping to Finland.
Before retreating, the revolutionists blew up the warships Petro-
pavlovsk and Sebastopol. All officers and civilian leaders cap-
tured by the Soviet troops, were ordered by War Minister Trotzky
to be put to death. From information that has since come to hand,
it would seem that the rebellion arose from hatred of discipline
and was not political in origin.
Reports of revolts in various parts of Russia were numerous
towards the end of March. An anti-Soviet rising was reported to
have occurred in Kazan, about five hundred and fifty miles east
of Moscow, on the Volga, and in Western Russia anti-Soviet
movements are also reported. Fighting occurred in White Rus-
sia between Bolsheviki and peasants, and Pskov was reported to
be in the hands of the counter-revolutionists. Another disturbed
section is said to be Minsk. The counter-revolutionary activities
so far have resulted, according to reports, in the driving out of
twenty Soviets in various parts of this region.
The Social Revolutionists, the Mensheviki, in Petrograd have
started a new and active propaganda in that city by means of
pamphlets, in which they renew the demands for the convoca-
tion of a Constituent Assembly. The food situation in Petrograd
is represented as desperate. There are no rations for the author-
ities to distribute, and the populace is utilizing the right, granted
after the recent period of unrest, to buy or procure provisions
from the country.
On the other hand, indications that Lenine's influence is far
from waning was afforded in the election of the central com-
VOL. CXIII. 18
274 RECENT EVENTS [May,
mittee at the recent Communist congress at Moscow, when all his
proposals regarding internal policy were accepted almost without
opposition. With regard to the decision of the congress on free-
dom of trade, foreign trade is still nationalized, but trade within
Russian borders becomes free.
To reconcile the peasants and encourage enterprise with
them, Lenine has permitted the cooperative organizations to re-
sume activity in the hope that they will be able to start distribu-
tion and get in circulation the raw material now hidden by the
peasants.
Clashes between the Fascisti, or Extreme
Italy. Nationalists, with grave disorders and
much bloodshed, continued throughout the
month, the climax being a bomb explosion on March 23d in the
Diana Theatre at Milan, killing thirty-one and wounding over one
hundred. Several anarchists have been arrested on the suspicion
that the explosion was inspired by them, as a protest against the
imprisonment of Enrico Malatesta, the anarchist leader. Mala-
testa, who has been in jail at Milan since his arrest last October,
in connection with an anarchist plot, is reported to be in a serious
condition as a result of a hunger strike.
Rioting and bomb outrages have occurred also at Florence,
Genoa, Rome, Allesandria, Padua, Bologna, Venice, Turin, Trieste,
Ferrara and other places. Following searches by the police along
the Italian Riviera and the seizure of letters showing relations with
Italian anarchists, about one hundred Russian, Hungarian and
Polish Communists have been arrested at Genoa. The investiga-
tion is being continued and further arrests are believed to be
imminent. A decree has been issued from Rome, ordering the
dissolution of the Communist Town Council at Bologna.
The inhabitants of the strips of Istrian territory that
were ceded to Italy under the Treaty of Rapallo, are proving most
unruly. Recent incursions of Italian Fascisti into the frontier
villages of Rignano and Carnizza, to make patriotic demonstra-
tions, have been met with bullets. It is explained that the Istrians
do not object to Italians as such, but dislike very much the
propaganda methods of the Fascisti.
On April 6th, the King promulgated a decree dissolving the
Chamber and fixing the general elections for May 15th. Although
a general election has for some weeks been regarded as imminent,
many Deputies hoped that the present excitable condition of the
country would cause the King to refuse to call the electors to the
polls at this time. Giolitti, however, convinced the King that the
Chamber as constituted not only did not represent the will of the
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
275
people, but could not assure a safe majority to the Cabinet. The
party which dreads the elections most is the Socialist; as it
realizes that the reaction of the middle classes has been so thor-
ough that not half their number will be sent back to Parliament.
As for the Popular, or Catholic Party, which claims one hun-
dred seats in the Chamber, they have several grave reasons for
disagreeing with the policy of the Government. Notable among
these are the failure of the Government to keep its promises re-
garding educational measures, dissatisfaction with the economic
policies of the Giolitti bill, and contempt of the Government's
failure to deal effectually with the Fascisti, who have been creating
a reign of terror in many parts of Italy. Of these causes, that
dealing with the education measures is regarded as the one on
which the Popular Party will have the most solid backing among
the Catholic population. The rejection by the Parliamentary
Commission of the measure intended to remove the handicaps
which penalize students of private schools, caused universal sur-
prise and indignation in Catholic circles, especially as Giolitti had
given definite assurances that the Catholic programme for free-
dom of the schools would be respected. When it was found that
only one Liberal voted with the Popular Party for removing the
handicaps, the prediction was freely made that the party would
pass over into opposition agaimst the Government. The failure of
the Giolitti economic bill, in the eyes of the Popular Party, was
due to the fact that it secured merely workingmen's supervision of
management, whereas the aims of the party included working-
men's participation in management, profit and ownership. The
activities of the Fascisti furnished the most recent cause of the
party's opposition to the Government's policy. Deputy Miglioli,
in a fiery speech, flayed the inability of the Giolitti ministry to deal
with the activities of the trouble-makers.
The main provisions of the preliminary draft of an Italo-
French agreement as outlined in recent advices from Rome are
as follows: France to export to Italy 100,000 tons of coal monthly
from the Sarre and other mines at the domestic consumer's price.
France to assure Italy of scrap iron and steel to the amount of
150,000 tons this year, to be sold at current market prices, and
on leaving France to be exempt from export duty. The amount of
scrap iron and steel may be increased by an amount equal to the
weight of pig iron which Italians may export from France at the
same time. Italy to be bound by the agreement to import 35,000
tons of French pig iron this year at the market price.
Considerable feeling was aroused in Rome against the Russian
Commercial Commission when, on their baggage being examined,
276 RECENT EVENTS [May,
the Italian customs officers found, besides thousands of pamphlets
of Bolshevik propaganda, gold, platinum, strings of pearls, jewels
of the Tsar's family, and other valuables. M. Vorovsky, head of
the delegation, was fined eight hundred lire for importing con-
traband. First reports were to the effect, that as their protest
against examination of their baggage proved unavailing, the
Soviet delegation broke off relations and departed for Russia,
but this has not been confirmed.
After rumors extending over many months,
Hungary. of Royalist plots for the restoration of
former Emperor Charles to the throne of
Hungary, on March 25th Charles suddenly left his retreat at
Prangins, Switzerland, and, passing through Vienna, went to
Budapest. In Austria, Charles' reception was distinctly hostile,
but in Hungary, which was his real objective, and where there is
a strong monarchist sentiment, the populace were apparently in
his favor. Admiral Horthy, the Hungarian Regent, however, told
the ex-Emperor that his presence in Hungary at this time was
inadvisable and counseled his immediate departure.
This advice of the Regent was reenforced by the action of the
Allied Powers, who, through the Committee of Ambassadors at
Paris, served solemn notice on Hungary that the return to the
throne of Charles of Hapsburg would not be tolerated, and called
on the Budapest Government to send the ex-Emperor out of the
country. Formal action was taken on the initiative of the French
Government. The representatives of Rumania, Jugo-Slavia and
Czecho-Slovakia made a collective protest to the Hungarian Gov-
ernment against the restoration, threatening military action.
Meanwhile Charles had removed to Steinamanger, Hungary,
where after several days, he finally agreed to leave the country.
Before his departure he issued a proclamation maintaining his
claim to the throne of Hungary, but declaring that he could not
permit the assertion of his right to entail disturbances in the
present state of the kingdom. He returned to Switzerland on
April 6th. He was not allowed to return to Prangins, however,
but was conveyed to a place in the canton of Lucerne. The Swiss
Government permitted the ex-ruler to return to Switzerland only
on condition that he take part in no intrigues or propaganda
measures. He is prohibited from giving interviews or from
leaving the canton of Lucerne. Charles' return to Switzerland is
looked upon as the definite closing of the incident.
April 15, 1921.
With Our Readers.
Catholic Church in the United States suffered immeasur-
able loss in the death of His Eminence, James Cardinal
Gibbons. It is not our purpose to offer an estimate of his char-
acter and influence. Simplicity and sincerity were the twin gifts
that crowned him great in the acknowledgment of all the world.
The most effective protagonist of the Catholic Faith in the United
States, he was esteemed, and even reverenced, by a nation pre-
dominantly non-Catholic. An American of the truest, most loyal
type, he placed the Catholic Church, particularly during the late
War, in the forefront for leadership in patriotic service. He loved
the Church: he loved America. Age did not weaken his vision:
nor did struggle or adversity lessen his virile hope. His counsel
was sought by Presidents: his pronouncements were read atten-
tively by the entire nation. The Associated Press had a standing
order that whatever statement was issued by Cardinal Gibbons
should be sent entire at once over the wires. The testimony of the
world to his worth and influence should be the strongest incentive
to us to study his life and imitate his example.
* * * *
TTHROUGH the National Catholic Welfare Council, of which
<*> Cardinal Gibbons was the first President, our Holy Father,
Benedict XV. sent the following tribute:
The death of Our dearest Brother, the Cardinal Arch-
bishop of Baltimore, is a great grief not only for his diocese
and his Country, but also for the whole Church. Cardinal
Gibbons was the living testimony of the magnificent devel-
opment and the powerful organization which the Catholic
Church has attained in his Country, and for this reason he,
more than anybody else, could show to the people the
marvelous fruits that the Church can produce for the good
of mankind even in our times, and notwithstanding num-
berless difficulties.
Cardinal Gibbons, excellent priest, learned master, vig-
ilant pastor, was also an exemplary citizen, and by the ex-
ample and preaching of Christian virtues in private, as
well as in social, life, he contributed efficaciously to the
sound progress of his great Country. His memory, there-
fore, must be cherished with profound veneration not only
by every Catholic, but also by every citizen of the United
States of America.
His Excellency, Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate,
wrote :
Cardinal Gibbons, ever since his accession to the See of
Baltimore, and especially since his elevation to the Sacred
278 WITH OUR READERS [May,
College of Cardinals, has occupied a position of command-
ing and beneficial influence in the affairs of Church and
State. His is the one name that during forty-three years
has won the favor and confidence of the whole country.
Even those outside of the Catholic Church have had un-
bounded sympathy with him in his movements, and im-
plicit confidence in his practical wisdom.
All have admired his gentleness, affability and kindliness
of heart which were displayed on all occasions; and they
have testified profound respect for his dignity and official
preeminence. He was devoted to the interest of the Cath-
olic Church, which he loved intensely, and he was just as
devoted to the interest of his Country, which he loved none
the less tenderly. The United States was fer him the best
country in the world, and Baltimore the best city in the
universe. He gave to both the Church and State the best
that was in him, and was never found wanting when it was
a question of aiding the onward progress of either.
As a man, his uniform virtues were urbanity, humility,
patience, accessibility. He was ever the same gentle, con-
sistent friend and counselor to young and old, rich and
poor. The Church has lost a powerful priest and prelate,
and the Country has lost one who really, during the last
thirty or forty years, has been its most distinguished
citizen.
His Eminence, Cardinal O'Connell, declared:
The death of Cardinal Gibbons removes a foremost figure
from America's national life. It means to the Catholic
Church in this Country the loss of an eminent and distin-
guished churchman.
With his passing closes a remarkable career filled with
noble and far-reaching achievements. His was a long span
of life in the civil and religious history of the United States,
and his services to the nation and the Church have indelibly
stamped his name upon the pages that record the story of
both.
Cardinal Gibbons was America's first and finest citizen.
American born and American trained, he cherished Amer-
ica's traditions, and for more than half a century was
actively engaged in promoting the noblest ideals of Amer-
ican life. All his years were devoted to serving the best
interests of the American people; to every worthy move-
ment he gave his encouragement and support. The sound-
ness of his judgment and the clearness of his vision made
him a prudent counselor whom statesmen sought when
vital and complex problems called for solution. With un-
erring accuracy, he felt the pulse of the American public.
With unusual keenness, he detected and diagnosed social
maladies even before others were conscious of their exist-
ence. These great gifts of mind, accompanied by excep-
tional wisdom born of long years of varied experience, gave
1921-] WITH OUR READERS 279
to life pronouncements an extraordinary value and won for
his words respectful recognition.
Instinctively, in every great crisis his fellow countrymen
turned to him as a leader. Invariably, as if by habit, they
found themselves awaiting his judgment on every impor-
tant national issue. To him they were attracted no less
by the magnetism of his personality than by the power of
his statesmanship. By the gentleness of his manner, by
the broadness of his sympathies, by his loyal and patriotic
devotion to national interests, whether in time of peace
or in time of war, he won them, irrespective of race, class or
creed, and, type of the true American, he gave to America
the example of one who, after the service of God, desired
nothing more earnestly than the service of his Country.
More still, perhaps, will Cardinal Gibbons be remembered
as an illustrious churchman. Few great ecclesiastics in
modern times have played so large and so conspicuous a
part in the religious life of their country. He had been
closely identified with the Catholic Church in America for
fully sixty years. For more than a generation, he had pre-
sided over her destinies. Far back in the early sixties his
ministry began. In his long, laborious life he embodied the
noble traditions of those pioneer days, and from the splen-
did prelates who governed the Church in the period of her
struggling weakness he imbibed the majestic spirit with
which he guided her so ably through years of marvelous
growth and development to her present position of promi-
nence and power.
A Prince of the Church is dead. A mighty chieftain has
fallen. A kindly shepherd is taken from his flock. The
loss is irreparable.
And from Rome, our new American Cardinal Dougherty
cabled:
By the death of Cardinal Gibbons, the Church in America
has lost the greatest man in its history and our Country its
foremost citizen. He was the only survivor of the Vatican
Council which met under Pius IX., and also of the Bishops'
Third Plenary Council in Baltimore, and was the oldest
member of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Several gener-
ations of Catholics in the United States looked up to him as
their leader.
Cardinal Gibbons' salient traits of character seem to have
been his keen interest in men and the progress of the world,
and his rare judgment, his tact, and his kindly sympathy
for everything human. I had the honor, as a student in
the American College, to serve as an acolyte when Cardinal
Gibbons took possession of his titular church, Santa Maria
in Trastevere, in 1887, the year after he was created a
cardinal.
These are the tributes of leading Catholic dignitaries.
280 WITH OUR READERS [May,
THE President of the United States not only sent his personal
representative to the funeral Mass at Baltimore; but as soon
as he received the news of the Cardinal's death, wrote this appre-
ciation :
In common with all our people, I mourn the death of
Cardinal Gibbons. His long and notable service to Country
and to Church makes us all his debtors. He was ever ready
to lend his encouragement to any movement for the better-
ment of his fellowmen. He was the very finest type of
citizen and churchmen.
It was my good fortune to know him personally and I
held him in the highest esteem and veneration. His death is
a distinct loss to the Country, but it brings to fuller appre-
ciation a great and admirable life.
AN entire issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD might be occupied
with the laudatory editorials published in the secular press
of the Country. The chorus was spontaneous: magnificent. No
man in the memory of the present generation received such high
and such universal praise. The non-Catholic religious press were
likewise generous in their estimate: though the praise was be-
stowed now and again, as in the case of The Christian Advocate,
with such remarks as "The Italian Popes rule the Roman Church
in the United States," "the aggressive political programme of the
hierarchy (of the Catholic Church in the United States) is ab-
horrent to our ideas, yet we must admit their presence here con-
tributes to the maintenance of law, the preservation of order and
the promotion of morality." Such extraneous comments only
serve to make the praise of the dead Cardinal more noteworthy.
Lyman Abbott in The Outlook, who knew the dead Cardinal
for many years past, testifies:
Cardinal Gibbons was both a loyal Catholic and a loyal
American, true alike to the principles of his Church and the
principles of his Country. Throughout his long career, he
was a lover of liberty not a gentle and quiet lover of
liberty in the solitude of his closet, but an active and aggres-
sive soldier of liberty.
A single fact is worth a volume of theory. If any contro-
versial Protestant is inclined to say, as some have said, that
no Roman Catholic can be a true lover of liberty, the con-
clusive answer is Cardinal Gibbons. Churchmen and pa-
triot, ecclesiastic and democrat, all the more loyal to his
flag because loyal to his altar, servant of God, servant of his
fellowmen, his character and career reveal not only to his
own communion, but to all his fellow-citizens of every faith
the true ideal of a Christian priest.
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 281
Harvey's Weekly declared:
He was always on the side of his Church and his Country;
and of the right. Peace to his ashes, and honor to his
name !
The Weekly Review wrote :
^ The balanced influence of his life is a lesson for the times.
From certain vociferous quarters conies the insistent clamor
for a new religion which shall replace the spiritual element
by a concentration on practical service to mankind and by
political agitation to advance that cause. It is well for such
advocates to recall that Cardinal Gibbons, while holding
steadfastly to the tenets of his religious faith, was highly
sensitive to social and political conditions, and did indeed
accomplish much in advancing human brotherhood because
of his large influence as a "great Christian!"
This is in striking contrast to the smug criticism of the New
York Nation, which while it gives its modicum of praise, declares
that Cardinal Gibbons "gave no guidance to the minds of the rising
generation: made no contribution to the solution of any of the
spiritual and ethical problems that vex the souls of his con-
temporaries."
The Survey, through Samuel McCune Lindsay, believes that
he gave an enduring message :
The career of James Cardinal Gibbons is beyond doubt
one of the half dozen outstanding human products of the
first century and a half of our national life. It cannot be
accounted for or explained any more easily than that of
Lincoln, with whose career, though a whole generation
longer, it has much in common, in the quality and character
of its public service and the heritage of Americanism it be-
queathes to the future.
The nation mourns his loss, but will revere his memory
and needs more than ever to cultivate the lessons which
his clear social vision, his unimpeachable patriotism and
profound Americanism have taught us.
THE American Society of Friends (Quakers) who made, early
in 1921, a three months' survey of Ireland report that 25,000
families in that country, comprising about 100,000 men and
women and children, are in dire need. The survey was made
thoroughly and impartially. The distress, it reports, is that of
the habitually thrifty and industrious workers who would be able
to support their families, as they have always done in the past,
282 WITH OUR READERS [May,
were it not for the abnormal, chaotic situation now reigning in
Ireland.
"We may point out," the report continues, "that even when
employed, the workman in Ireland receives a wage so low that it
would he difficult for an American to understand how the Irish
workman can support himself and his family upon such a wage.
"Now, through no fault of their own, the families to which we
refer are without even this pitifully small income. In most cases,
their pathetic savings have already been spent for the barest neces-
sities of existence. They need bread, and they need it quickly.
"The present prevailing wage for ordinary unskilled labor in
Ireland ranges from $9.00 to $14.00 a week; even those who are
workers at electric power houses, for example, receive only $14.00;
motormen receive $12.50; conductors, $11.50; farm laborers rarely
more than $8.00."
To those who plead that working for Ireland's right of self-
government is un-American, we recommend a reading of this
report. Such pleaders are sympathizers with a particular political
party in England. The Manchester Guardian, the London Nation,
and many other journals of England are unbridled and unlimited
in their condemnation of the present Government of England,
which is forcing a military rule, irresponsible and conscienceless,
upon Ireland.
American Commission on Ireland, the reports of which
A have been published, was profoundly impressed by the ab-
sence of religious strife in Ireland outside of Ulster; and with
regard to Ulster the Commission shows unanimity of testimony to
the effect that the bigotry there is "artificially stirred up by those
whose economic and political interests are served by dividing the
people."
We would also call the attention of our readers to a remark-
able article published in an English magazine, Blackfriars (March,
1921), and entitled, "Ireland Today Under England (February,
1921)." The editor states: "This article, written by one of Eng-
lish descent living in Ireland, the son of a British officer, is not
published in the interests of any political party, but solely in the
interests of truth."
The article testifies: In Tipperary boys who were playing
ball were seized by the police: beaten with the butt ends of
revolvers: kicked: and five were carried off in a lorry to be further
dealt with. A blacksmith declared he heard one of the drunken
ruffians say: "I got seven years, in England, for murdering my
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 283
wife; and I'm getting thirty shillings a day in Ireland for mur-
dering Irishmen." "And," says the writer of the article, "hardly
a day is now passing without such a murder."
Again: "As two men came quietly out of a shop near where
I write, one was shot. He is since dead. He was an ex-navy man,
twenty-one years' service, a day in the water at the battle of
Jutland."
The writer cites fourteen cases, many far more harrowing
than the two mentioned.
And of these murderers not one has been punished. "And
not one of the murderers of the Irish, not one from those who
killed Thomas MacCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, down to those
who have killed the young expectant mother in Gort, and the little
girl in Dublin streets, and the priest in Galway, called out of his
house as for the dying; himself then murdered by them, and
thrown dead into a bog; and so many shot in their beds; the
crippled, the sick, the fathers of families, the young boys not
one of these murderers (in spite of verdicts of murder against
them) has been even tried. Not one. And today, lest the truth
should still be told, coroner's inquests are not allowed. But the
plotters and the criminals, the organizers and the patrons, are the
judges and in secret. What a farce! What a bleeding and
bloody farce!"
The article deserves the widest circulation. It ends with this
passage:
"As for us in Ireland, we hear, more and more, our exile Dr.
Todhunter's Banshee:
'Wail no more, lonely one, Mother of Exiles, wail no more,
Banshee of the World no more!
Thy sorrows are the World's, thou art no more alone,
Thy wrongs the World's!'"
OUB book review pages of this month call attention to a book
entitled The Voice of the Negro, by Bobert T. Kerlin.
Undoubtedly, one of the most serious questions confronting
America is the negro problem. That the majority pay little atten-
tion to it, either because they think it unimportant or because
they refuse to be vexed by it, does not lessen the truth of the above
statement. It is certainly inadvisable to allow unrest and dis-
satisfaction to grow until they assume terrifying proportions.
And this is the case with the negro problem as it stands today.
Kerlin's book tells not only of the extent of the unrest and the
284 WITH OUR READERS [May,
determination to secure a change in conditions : it tells also of the
organized, intelligent leadership by negroes themselves, and of the
organized army of loyal followers back of them. The negro press
has stirred the negro people with the spirit of a new crusade.
That there is much of the radical : the revolutionary and the im-
possible in their demands does not make the movement any the
less dangerous. It has reached proportions that demand sym-
pathetic study and consideration by a recognized national body,
representative of all interests concerned, which would report upon
effective measures to lessen and possibly end the menace.
* * * *
PRESIDENT HARDING in his recent message to Congress
pointed out the critical danger. "We face the fact that many
millions of people of African descent are numbered among our
population, and that in a number of States they constitute a very
large proportion of the total population. It is unnecessary to
recount the difficulties incident to this condition, or to emphasize
the fact that it is a condition which cannot be removed. There
has been suggestion, however, that some of its difficulties might
be ameliorated by a humane and enlightened consideration of it;
a study of its many aspects and an effort to formulate, if not a
policy, at least a national attitude of mind calculated to bring
about the most satisfactory possible adjustment of relations be-
tween the races and of each race to the national life. One pro-
posal is the creation of a commission embracing representatives
of both races, to study and report on the entire subject. The
proposal has real merit. I am convinced that in mutual tolerance,
understanding, charity, recognition of the interdependence of the
races and the maintenance of the rights of citizenship lies the road
to righteous adjustment."
* * * *
THE President's words are the more vital when we remember
some of the wrongs from which the negroes of the South still
suffer. Peonage, for example, forbidden by federal statute, is still
widely practised, and if the law in the practice is technically ob-
served, it is practically violated. There may be only one Williams
in the South; but peonage is common in North and South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In these
States, larceny, for example, is made a crime whether it means
the stealing of thousands of dollars or the stealing of a chicken.
It is punished by disfranchisement and imprisonment. The law
was so framed in order to disfranchise as many negroes as pos-
sible. The lightest possible sentence is one year in prison. On
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 285
conviction, it is customary for the judge to ask if some farmer
will not pay the court costs and take the culprit for a year. Rather
than go to prison the culprit accepts a farmer's offer: and is thus
bound into practical slavery for a year. The laws of vagrancy
justify the arrest of a negro if he be out of a job for ten days.
No white man is considered a vagrant no matter how long he
remain idle.
Peonage is promoted by the fact that many negro workers on
the farms in the South are "croppers;" that is, they receive no
wages, but are entitled to a share in the crop when gathered. By
the time the crop is gathered they are often heavily in debt:
they must stay to pay off the debt: if the husband should die, his
wife and children must remain until the debt is fully paid.
Meanwhile, the exodus of negro laborers from the South
during the War, and their consequent taste of freedom, of self-
importance and oftentimes of consequent lawlessness, have fed
the dissatisfaction and unrest. We have but hinted at the prob-
lem. It is many sided: it runs very deep into the social life of
America. Thoughtfulness on it should not be entirely foreign
to us.
'T'HE answer of a business man, who writes in The American
A Church Monthly, to the question, "Should the Church Adver-
tise?" is an emphatic no: if by advertising is meant the methods
that business uses in stimulating a demand for its merchandise.
His direct concern is with the advertising possibilities of the Epis-
copal Church.
The life current of that Church, he believes, has been "short
circuited through the rusty wires of Puritanism. Stampeded by
the failure of Protestantism, we stand by and shout for aid to the
element in our civilization that has helped to land it where we are
today. We stand there and wail against fate, and let the Catholic
Church of Rome put to work the power of traditions which as
rightfully belong to us, increase through them the strength of her
organization, laugh at the fears that beset the Protestants and
boast an increase in membership that a World War could not
halt!"
This "business man" estimates that "eighty per cent, of the
Christian world is Catholic, and thirty per cent, of Christian
America holds faith in the same Church.
"Now what has this and all that has gone before to do with
advertising the Church? Just this: The Roman Catholic Church
today is the one religious body of Christendom that stands forth
286 WITH OUR READERS [May,
with strength unimpaired. I am no apologist for Rome and hold
no brief for the Pope. But I am willing to face the facts before
I pay for advertising space. Rome has much to explain theo-
logically and politically, but in the face of Protestant despair and
Episcopalian pessimism, she emerges from the World War suc-
cessful, triumphant and powerful. The reasons that give her this
position cut back with sharp emphasis upon the Churches that
are forgetting the faith of the fathers and are calling upon the
gods of big business for help today. They have failed, and she
has marched forward.
"Why has Rome succeeded? The answer will explain why
the other Churches have failed. It seems to me that Rome has
succeeded because she has been Catholic from the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be. She made up her mind early on what
was truth, she accepted the creeds that formulated that truth in
simple form, and she went to work. From that day to this she
and her children have never ceased from work, day and night,
month after month, year after year, through the centuries. She
has never stopped. She has learned and stored up the secrets of
the human soul, she knows human motives and uses them, she
understands human weaknesses and discounts them as a mother
overlooks the impetuosity of her child. She is the greatest psy-
chologist the world has ever known, but she has remained human
among humans, and faithful to the truth she began with."
gladly give space to the following letter which takes ex-
ception to certain statements made in the review of a book
by John A. Godrycz, in our March issue:
THE DROPSIE COLLEGE,
Philadelphia, April 10, 1921.
SIR:
In the brief review of a book by John A. Godrycz, entitled: The
Political and Financial Independence of the Vatican, published in your
magazine for March, 1921, there occur statements about the Jews which
are without foundation in fact and to which I am sure your estimable
journal would, therefore, not wish to give currency.
It is asserted, for example, that "The Jews are exceptionally
favored in their dreams of financial imperialism." I am able to assure
you with the greatest positiveness that the Jews have no such dreams.
The idea that they control any considerable proportion of the capital
of the world, is a myth and the further idea that those Jews who are
engaged in the banking business or other considerable mercantile
enterprises have relationship with each other, is also a myth. They
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 287
engage in competition with each other, just as do all business men
holding to the maxim that "competition is the life of trade."
Again it is said that Palestine "will become a kind of a Jewish
Vatican." This statement, too, is without foundation. The importance
of the meeting together of the Rabbis of Palestine has been greatly
exaggerated. It was solely for the purpose of providing a centralized
religious authority for the comparatively small number of Jews of
Palestine itself. There might at some future time be held a meeting
equivalent to the ecumenical council of the Church, but from my own
knowledge of Jewish religious conditions not only in America, but in
various parts of the world, I think that anything like a Jewish Vatican,
if by that is meant a centralized religious power and authority, is out
of the question, even if it were desired. In view of the excellent
results which have accrued to the Catholic Church from this central-
ized authority, there are some Jews who would like to see such an
authority established, but at the present at least, it is outside the realms
of possibility.
Equally incorrect and, of course, politically impossible, is the
statement that "all the Jews living without its (Palestine) frontiers,
will be considered, at one and the same time, citizens of the inde-
pendent State of Palestine, and citizens of the countries wherein they
live." No such plan of double citizenship is desired by the Jews or
possible under any conceivable political system. A Jew in Palestine
will be a Palestinian national and a Jew in America will be an Amer-
ican citizen, and nothing else.
The statement that you have made upon the authority of the book
under review, is entirely incomprehensible. What the writer may
have in mind is that a person, Christian or Jew, who lives in one
of the dominions of Great Britain, say Canada, would at the same time
owe loyalty to the Canadian Government and to the British Empire.
Such a condition might arise in the future with regard to a Palestinian,
if the mandate should lend itself to such a construction, but since the
details of the mandate have not been approved, no one is in position to
make even such a statement.
The present time is one in which many incorrect statements on
many subjects are being given currency. I feel sure that it is not the
desire of your own estimable and dignified magazine to engage in such
a course, and while I have in the main paid no attention to incorrect
or false statements appearing in other journals, I have been moved to
write in this vein to you, feeling well assured that your own magazine
published in the interest of a great religion, has no desire to give
currency to statements unfair to any other religion.
Very respectfully yours,
CYRUS ABLER.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
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Dom Paul Delatte. Translated by Dom J. McCann. Our Lord's Last Discourses.
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The Custard Cup. By Florence B. Livingston. $1.90 net. Half Loaves. By
Margaret C. Banning. $1.90 net. Cartagena and the Banks of the Sinu. By
R. B. Cunninghame Graham. $6.00 net.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Psychology and Natural Theology. By Owen A. Hill, S.J. $3.50. The Noon-
Mark. By Mary S. Watts. $2.50. Helps for Students of History. By John H.
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Edgar Allen Poe; How to Know Him. By C. A. Smith. Ralph Waldo Emerson;
How to Know Him. By Samuel Crothers.
E. P. BUTTON & Co., New York:
A Chair on the Boulevard. By Leonard Merrick. $1.90.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
Government War Contracts. By J. Franklin Crowell, Ph.D., LL.D. $1.00 net.
Today and Yesterday. By William D. Foulke, LL.D. The Idea of Coventry
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AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION, New York :
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DODD, MEAD & Co., New York:
The McCarthys in Early American History. By Michael J. O'Brien. The Problems
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Aristo Shakespeare and Corneille. By Benedetto Croce.
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Missale Romanum. $3.25. Repetitorium, Theologiee Fundamentalis. Ry P.
Virgilio Wass, O.M.Cap. $1.25. De Pcenis Ecclesiasticis. By H. Noldin, S.J.
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
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BLOUD ET GAY, Paris:
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Allons a Dieu. Par Y. d'Isne.
THE
VOL. CXIII.
JUNE, 1921
No. 675
WHY GOD BECAME MAN. 1
BY LESLIE J. WALKER, S.J., M.A. 2
I.
Credo, ut intelligam I believe, that I may understand.
UR Catholic forefathers used to think that some
day the whole world would become Christian.
There is hope for it still, for Christianity is yet
young as compared with the vast periods of time
which elapsed before Christ was born into the
world.
None the less, Christendom, as she is behaving at present,
is hardly an example to the pagan world without. Neither,
internally, is there much sign of progress, unless it be in her
ever-increasing desire for reunion. The cardinal tenets of
Christianity, from belief in which salvation flows, are, in the
minds of many, fast evaporating beneath the heat of modernist
criticism. Even Catholics, who at least know what Christian-
ity teaches and believe it firmly, often fail to appreciate as
they ought either the significance of their belief or its immense
1 A series of articles dealing with fundamental Christian dogmas from the point
of view of their value, intellectual and practical, psychological and social.
2 Author of Theories of Knowledge and of The Problem of Reunion, etc. ; lecturer
in Theology in the University of Oxford.
COPYRIGHT.
VOL. CXIII. 19
1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
290 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
value, as something that has bearing on one's whole outlook,
historical, scientific, and practical, as well as religious.
Nor is it only our theologians and preachers who com-
plain of this lack of interest in the things of God. Hegel, most
famous of modern philosophers, also has lamented this "wide-
spread, almost universal, indifference towards what in earlier
times were held to be essential doctrines of the faith." Christ
for many, he says, is "brought down into a moral sphere into
which even heathens, like Socrates, were capable of entering."
The religion of today is "based on feeling," and so is "reduced
to little more than a problem in psychology." For the evan-
gelical Christ is still "the central point of faith and devotion in
the deepest sense;" but his "Christian life as a whole restricts
itself to this devotional bent, and the weighty doctrines of
the Trinity, of the resurrection of the body, as also the miracles
of the Old and New Testaments are neglected as matters of
indifference and have lost their importance." 3
Why this indifference, this criticism, this contempt for all
that our Christian forefathers and we, Catholics of today,
regard as of vital importance? Salvation is bound up with
Redemption, Redemption with the Incarnation, the Incarna-
tion with the Trinity, of which the Second Person became
man. The whole hangs together; and has endured so long,
has inspired such wonderful Christian work, that it can hardly
be without value. Yet there is no one of these doctrines that
today is not vigorously impugned; more especially that of the
Trinity, which is the basic doctrine of all and used to be re-
garded as the distinctive mark of a Christian. For Mr. Wells
the Trinity is a myth, invented by Greek philosophers and
imposed on Christian thought, yet fraught with endless con-
tradiction, and useless withal for experience, spiritual or
otherwise. And Mr. Wells is not alone in his opinion. He
but voices the unexpressed thoughts of the public for whom
he writes.
It is not difficult to account for this attitude of mind or for
the skepticism and chaos which everywhere prevails in the
sphere of religion. We have only to remember that most
men are brought up in a tradition which denies all authority
in religion even that of the Rible and, consequently, all
revelation. But what concerns us more is to find a remedy,
3 The Philosophy of Religion, translated by Spiers and Sanderson, 1895, p. 38.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 291
especially seeing that Catholics can hardly help but be af-
fected by the hostile environment in which of necessity they
live.
The remedy that Hegel would suggest is npt that we
should surrender our beliefs as the Modernist would recom-
mend, but that we should think them out in all their manifold
bearings. "If God be excluded from the region of rational
intelligence or insight, ... if the consciousness of God spring
only out of feeling, . . . nothing is left but to assign to Him
the region of accidental subjectivity. God would thus be an
historical product of weakness, of fear, of joy, of interested
hopes, cupidity and lust of power. What has its root only in
my feelings, is only for me; it is mine, but not its own; it has
no independent existence in and for itself. . . . For this reason
the older metaphysic has always demonstrated first of all that
God is, and not merely that there is a feeling of God; and thus
the philosophy of religion, too, finds the demand made upon
it to demonstrate God." 4
As a comment upon the speculations of current psychol-
ogy on the origin of religion, these remarks are excellent. But
Hegel went too far. Convinced of the inherent truth of Chris-
tianity, he held, not indeed that her doctrines can be known
apart from revelation, but that, granted revelation in Spirit
and through Spirit their inherent truth can become so mani-
fest to our spirits that we need not the authority, whether of
Christ or of His Church, to vouch for them. There is contra-
diction here. Truth may become manifest in Spirit and
through Spirit, provided we take into account all the ways in
which Spirit may, and has, manifested itself. But this would
include authority. Hegel, on the other hand, neglecting this
factor in thought-progress, and trusting solely to reason, would
demonstrate the Trinity by a process of deduction from the
fundamental principles of his transcendental logic.
He has failed to convince humanity that his argument is
valid. History and experience alike confirm the teaching of
the Church that, apart from the witness of Christ, the greater
Christian mysteries can neither be discovered nor demon-
strated. With respect to the Trinity, for instance, pre-Chris-
tian philosophers hardly get beyond the idea of emanation,
and do not even approach the doctrine of a triple personality;
4 Op. cit., pp. 50, 51.
292 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
while post-Christian philosophers have either patently bor-
rowed from Christian dogma, or have devised systems bearing
but a remote resemblance to that of Christian tradition.
Moreover, a reaction has set in, even amongst Hegelians.
So incompetent has mere intellect proved in the search for
ultimate religious Truth, that Professor Bosanquet can in one
sentence tell us that "we are spirits, and our life is one with
the Spirit which is the whole and the good;" and hence "are
eternal," and in the next, assure us that, "this is no matter
for argument, or for trying to take away from you that which
you love to believe and what gives you strength. It is only
a matter for holding fast to the centre." 5
Thus do we pass to and fro; from thesis to antithesis:
out from feeling, through the magnificent and systematic
Hegel, only to find ourselves back again in his disciple at the
standpoint of those who would restrict themselves to a "devo-
tional bent," and would treat all theology as "interesting and
valuable speculation," but not as "part of religion." 6
Is there no way of steering a middle course between this
Scylla and Charybdis of mere religious feeling and non-re-
ligious thought and speculation?
From the Supreme Good all thought should flow, and,
in flowing, should "confirm me in my belief in it." But if all
thought flow from one source, it should blend in one vast and
harmonious whole, so that the more we think, the nearer
should we approach to Hegel's ideal of religion as "the region
in which all the enigmas of the world are solved, all the con-
tradictions of deep-reaching thought have their meaning un-
veiled, and where the voice of the heart's pain is silenced."
Hegel and Bosanquet are complementary. It is true, on
the one hand that, "we cannot be 'saved' as we are; we can-
not cease to be what we are; we can only be saved by giving
ourselves to something in which we remain what we are, and
yet enter into something new." 7 But, on the other, it is not
true that this supreme act of self-surrender to a Good which
we but dimly perceive "can continue to exist, if reason has
convinced itself of the opposite. . . . The one side is cast
away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true
peace in this way." 8 Neither by the suppression of faith, nor
What Is Religion? pp. 25, 26. 1920. e Cf. Bosanquet, pp. 32, 33.
T Bosanquet, pp. 8, 9. "Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, i., 49.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 293
by the suppression of reason can peace come. It can come
only if they work together in harmony. And it is on this ac-
count that the Church, as Hegel points out, "has consistently
and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposi-
tion to faith and yet be placed in subjection to it.
The need of thinking out the mysteries of faith has been
recognized ever since the day when John wrote his Gospel or
Paul his Epistle to the Romans. While hardly had the Church
begun to preach than the work of harmonizing old truth and
new was begun by Christian apologists. The two streams of
tradition, human and divine, have come down to us by differ-
ent channels; but since their source is the same, they cannot
be contradictory: the one is the complement of the other.
And if Christianity is to make headway, we must still take
cognizance of this fact; must still present dogma in such a way
that it will harmonize with our present knowledge and appeal
to the mentality of our day.
Reason, now as ever, must labor as faith's ancilla; and,
that she may be able to do this, she is in our seminaries put
through a long course of training, first in philosophy, then in
theology. The movement of the argument which runs through
this seven years' course and links up its various treatises, may
be summarized briefly as follows:
First, the universe with its multitudinous comings and
goings, is shown to be not self-explanatory; and so to postulate
an Other. This Other, Who accounts for it and sustains it in
being and activity, is called its Creator. The fact that the uni-
verse is rich with intelligence and law postulates intelligence
in the Creator. Next, is shown the possibility of this intel-
ligent Creator communicating His knowledge to finite intel-
ligences, not merely through nature, but also directly Spirit
moving spirit. This is revelation; the crowning instance of
which is that made through Christ, Whose competence as a
Spirit-moved intelligence is vouched for alike by the forecast
of His coming, by the miracles which He worked during life,
and by the fulfillment of His promises in the Society which
He founded. As a competent witness, what He testifies, or
what His Church testifies, guided by Him in the Spirit, is true.
Then comes dogma proper. Christ claimed divinity, and the
Church worships Him as God. He spoke of His Experience
of the Father, and of the Spirit which He would send HI His
294 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
own place, and the Church in the Spirit confesses this triple
personality and baptizes in this name. Therefore, these
dogmas are true.
No fault can be found with either the logical coherence
or the systematic completeness of this method. It is its thor-
oughness which accounts for the competence of our clergy
and for the rareness of lapses from theological orthodoxy.
Yet the very completeness of the method carries with it
one defect. In studying the numerous treatises, one may
sometimes forget that each monk in his cell is also a monk in
a monastery. Concentrating on this or that detail, the beauty
of the whole may become blurred. Absorbed in the examina-
tion of evidence, the value of what is at stake may be over-
looked. Philosophic arguments do not give us God as He is:
revelation must supplement them. Then God's action in this
or that sphere must be discussed. God and the Trinity, the
Trinity and the Incarnation, the Incarnation and the Church,
the Church and the Sacraments are severed one from another,
and, thus severed, lose in part their power of appeal. The
whole, though it is not, yet appears to be a patchwork.
This defect is inherent in the very nature of the analytic
method, which we are forced to use wherever the matter to
be considered is vast and complex. Our intellects, being finite,
cannot take in the whole at a glance, but must of necessity
work dividendo et componendo. The same defect, therefore,
appears (and in a still more marked degree) in science with
its numerous and loosely linked branches, and again in our
methods of teaching, oral or written, in sermons and instruc-
tions, in articles, text-books and treatises. Moreover, as the
stream of time grows longer, the knowledge which it carries
with it, increases prodigiously in volume. The "group-mind"
not only remembers more, the more there is to remember, but
by means of research and reconstruction, in which many
minds collaborate, its memory becomes with each succeeding
generation more detailed and more faithful. This does but
increase our difficulty, so that in our day water-tight com-
partments have become well-nigh inevitable. Yet how delight-
ful it would be, and how fruitful, if we could but break down
their walls, and in this way get a glimpse of the whole of
God dwelling and operating in His universe, space-dimensions
and time-series, thought, life, and energy, all laid out before us.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 295
It must have been some such idea as this which moved
St. Anselm to formulate that famous maxim: Credo, ut iniel-
ligam. He saw that, only if we look at the universe in the
light which faith throws upon it, shall we ever understand it
as a whole, or be able to snythesize satisfactorily its manifold
parts and aspects. And what was true in his day, is still more
true in ours. With the multiplication of facts, our viewpoints
also have multiplied, and conflict has resulted. Reason is at
war not only with faith, but with itself. Skepticism is afield
no less in the domain of science than it is in the realm of
theology. Peace can come only with harmony; and harmony
can never be attained till we view the universe from that
central standpoint which God has made plain to us. Once
religion was the realm in which all the enigmas of the world
were solved, all the contradictions of deep-reaching thought
had their meaning unveiled, and the voice of the heart's pain
was silent. For many souls it is so still, and can become so
for all, if they will but join themselves to the whole which
God animates, and look at their problems from the standpoint
of its self-revealed centre.
Why did God create the universe? And why, in partic-
ular, did He create this tiny globe within it, which is the thing
that to us most matters? Why is there evil upon it? Why is
it a process? Why did so many ages elapse before man ap-
peared? Why so many more before He appeared to whom
Christians look for light to understand the world and for
grace to transcend it? Why did Christ appear at all, and,
having appeared, why is He so diversely interpreted and so
commonly ignored and discredited? Day and night the uni-
verse is changing, and we are changing with it, for better or
for worse. What does all this signify? And what do we
signify who, in spite of Copernicus, still fancy ourselves the
pivot of the universe, the main feature within it, the centre
for which all exists and to which all must be related?
There can be no doubt that we together with other intel-
ligent beings in other worlds, if such there be must in some
manner be regarded as the centre of the universe. For what
possible sense can there be in the perpetual dance of elec-
trons, the constant regroupings of electrons, the whirling of
worlds one round the other, as a stone is whirled at the end
of a string, unless there be somebody to contemplate this,
296 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
somebody to benefit thereby, somebody to take pleasure in the
knowledge of these happenings? The main features of the
universe mountains and plains and valleys and rivers, foliage
and forests, the vastness of the sea, the sun beyond the cloud
filled atmosphere, the moon and the stars that glisten in the
night all these things combine to form one vast harmonious
whole of ceaseless activity, wondrous beauty, persistent and
inestimable utility. But where would be their utility and of
what value their beauty if there were no intelligent beings to
behold them, to understand and make use of their power?
Animals presumably enjoy life. But their horizon is re-
stricted to the tiniest fraction of this one tiny globe; and even
this has no meaning for them, still less the universe as a whole.
It can hardly be for their sakes that the universe exists. If
it exists for the sake of anyone at all, it can only be for the
sake of beings who can understand and appreciate it. We are
told that the universe has evolved from a state in which no
intelligent life, and it may be no life at all, was possible
within it. Now, at least on this planet and possibly elsewhere,
intelligent life has appeared. Unless it had been destined to
appear all along, the evolution of the universe is wholly with-
out meaning, and there is no reason why it should be in
existence.
On the other hand, man appears late in this evolutionary
process; and if there be other intelligent beings in other
worlds, they, too, must be late-comers. Hence, though it may
be for the sake of such beings that the universe exists, it
cannot be they who produce it.
Does then the universe exist simply, all on its own so to
speak? If so, why does it come into being little by little?
Why is it a process, and a process in which its ratio essendi,
man, is a comparatively late-comer? Why are not all stages
just one stage? And, since they are not, how comes it that in
the later stage, which flows from the earlier, there appears
what in the earlier was absent? Creative evolution will not
explain this. It merely states the fact that evolution is crea-
tive; it does not explain how it comes to be creative.
The universe again is made up of bits. There are bits
everywhere and of all sizes; bits that work harmoniously, and
bits that thwart one another. And no bit is any other bit.
Each has its own nature and properties, which each seeks to
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 297
realize, yet cannot, except in coordination with other bits.
There is independence throughout the universe as well in the
parts of things as in things themselves and in persons. Yet
throughout there is also inter-relation and inter-dependence.
How come these parts to contribute to a whole, and the whole
to consist of these parts? Inter-relation is the negation of in-
dependence. How, then, does what is independent come to
be inter-related, or what is inter-related come to be inde-
pendent?
Whichever way we look at the matter the inference is
forced upon us that there is something beyond the universe
which is yet operative within it. No one can give to another
what he does not himself possess; yet this happens every
moment in the process of evolution. New features are doubt-
less present potentially in the old, but whence comes their
actuality, unless there be something or someone who cooper-
ates in the process and in whom all things are actual? Parts
are the negation of unity, and yet form a whole which is a
unity. Whence comes this whole, unless there be something
which coordinates the activities of parts, and so enables them
to transcend, while yet in part retaining, their independence?
There are but few philosophers who have failed to recog-
nize in the universe either an ultimate Cause or else an im-
manent Ground. And the difference between these two ex-
planations, if pressed, turns out to be verbal rather than real.
For both Cause and Ground must be immanent in the sense
of being operative within the universe, and neither Cause nor
Ground can be immanent in the sense of being a mere part of
the universe. The common objection to the doctrine of a
"First Cause" rests wholly on misunderstanding. "First" does
not mean first in the order of time, but ultimate in the order
of nature and explanation. Unless there be some real and
active principle upon which the universe depends and by
which it is sustained in being and operation, its mosaic-like
structure, its perpetual transformations, the inter-relation and
inter-action of its innumerable parts of every kind and mag-
nitude, is inexplicable.
Nor must we forget that other aspect of the problem upon
which already we have touched. A universe of inter-related
and interacting parts is futile and meaningless except as the
expression of a mind which other minds are destined to con-
298 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
template and enjoy. The parts of the universe are real, inan-
imate as well as animate, animate as well as intelligent; but,
except as the expression of intelligence to intelligence, the
existence of the universe has neither purpose nor sense. The
much-abused analogy of the watch still holds good in broad
outline. In their respective orders, the dynamic harmony and
complex structure of both the watch and the universe bespeak
the mind of an intelligent maker and postulate an intelligent
user.
We are getting nearer to religion now. An intelligent
Being Who expresses Himself intelligibly to another is plainly
a person, and the persons to whom He expresses Himself, if
they recognize Him in this expression of Himself, are already
in relation with that Person. Philosophy may bring us to God,
and, if we surrender to God, when we recognize Him, may lead
us to communion with God. But there, I think, philosophy
leaves us.
Yet the human mind still craves for knowledge. The
enigmas of the universe are not yet solved. Nor is the voice
of the heart's pain yet silent. It is a great thing to know that
God exists, and a greater thing to know that the universe
manifests God's nature. But unless we know how it manifests
God's nature, there will still lurk the suspicion that God, like
the universe, may be full of all manner of blemishes.
Philosophers have often tackled this problem, but with-
out, as a rule, marked success. Plato used to teach, for in-
stance, that all things in the world of phenomena are faint
copies of divine and eternal ideas; but he omitted to specify
most of them, and forgot entirely to tell us how God comes by
these ideas. Even in Scholasticism, where this theory is de-
veloped, we learn little that is positive of God's nature, beyond
that He is, and necessarily is; that He is intelligent and in
every way perfect; that all possible things are eternally pres-
ent before His mind, and, if existent, are sustained by Him in
existence. Other attributes seek rather to remove misconcep-
tions of God. They deny that He changes, or is in any way
composite or limited. The philosophic concept of God is true
so far as it goes, but it does not say enough of God's nature to
enable us to see clearly how God expresses Himself in the
universe as we know it.
But if God has expressed Himself in nature for the benefit
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 299
of persons who share in that nature, He may also communi-
cate Himself directly to these persons, since they, no less than
their enviroment, are directly sustained by His power. Chris-
tians claim that such a revelation of God has been made, and
it is precisely to this that they would appeal in order to inter-
pret the universe in which they live. Credo, ut intelligam
I believe, that I may understand.
God is. There is no reason beyond Himself why He
should be. He simply is. He is the Existent. He could not
"not be." And everything that can exist, is realized in Him
all knowledge, all happiness, all perfection. Neither does God
exist in parts or successively. Whatever is in Him, is alto-
gether and eternally. Everything that can be experienced He
experiences in one and the self-same experience, Himself.
All that can be thought or perceived, to Him is eternally pres-
ent. He sees it in Himself . It exists in Him, because He exists;
and exists altogether in the one actuality. God is one.
But also God is three. He is not a mere blank to which
we ascribe infinite perfection, all lumped together. In Him
is order and procession process eternal, self-subsistent, and
complete.
God thinks. But "everyone who thinks, gives rise to
something within himself, which is the concept of the thing
understood, and proceeds from his knowledge of it." 9 There-
fore, God thinks of an object, which is distinguished from the
subject which thinks, yet eternally is one with it. Or (in the
Hegelian dialect) God expresses Himself, and, in so doing,
posits Himself over against Himself as an Other which is
yet one with Himself.
This expression of Himself, because it is an expression, is
called the divine Logos; and because it is generated within
God and is His perfect expression or likeness, is called the
Son; while per contra the principle by which it is generated
is called the Father. In considering the relation of the Son
to the Father both these notions must be kept before the mind;
for, as we experience them, both are faulty. Concepts in
which we express ourselves have no reality except in thought,
and the sons that are born of us are not only real, but separate.
In God, on the other hand, in Whom all acts are perfect, the
Son is other than the Father, and yet, is His perfect image,
"Aquinas, Summ. Theol., i., q. 27, a. 1.
300 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
co-equal and co-eternal, is wholly one in nature, and so is
both personal and divine.
There is also a third person. "That which is loved," says
Cardinal Billot, "is in the lover, in the sense that there is an
inclination towards what is loved, which proceeds from the
will of the lover." 10 But intelligence also is involved. So that
love proceeds from a dual principle ; namely, from the impulse
to love, and from the knowledge of that which is loved as it is
expressed in the concept of it as lovable. 11 In God there is
something analogous. God, as thinking self, is distinguished
from Himself as thought-object, and both, being perfect and
co-equal, are equally personal. They are the Father and the
Son. But also they recognize their essential unity, and join
themselves together in an eternal act of love. And this act
also being perfect, there arises from it a third person or hypos-
tasis, the Spirit of Love; which presupposes the other two
and proceeds from them, yet is one with them in nature, co-
equal, co-eternal; proceeding from the Father and the Son,
as the Son is generated by the Father, in one and the self-
same act by which God eternally is.
There is mystery here, which we cannot fully probe with
our human intelligences or explain by our finite analogies.
Nor shall we be able to grasp the full significance of this truth
until, as Christ's adopted brethren, we be taken into the So-
ciety of the Trinity and see God "face to face." Yet this
knowledge of God, which comes through revelation, is far
more adequate than that which comes by inference from
nature; and, if only we will think it out in all its bearings,
throws an immense flood of light both upon the structure of
the universe and upon man's destiny.
The difficulty of conceiving how God is manifest in the
universe, is due largely to the fact that so many philosophers
have persistently represented Him as structureless. We know,
through revelation, that this is by no means the case. Within
God is procession and order, difference and number amid
unity. Hypostasis depends upon hypostasis, and proceeds
from it, though eteinally. Between the hypostasis there is
relation, in the one case of generation (paternity and filiation),
and in the other of what (for want of a better term) we call
10 De Deo Vno et Trino, 1897, p. 335.
11 Ibid., p. 336; cf. Aquinas, Comp. Thcol.. c. 49.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 301
spiratio, the procession of the Spirit of Love. If, then, we
exclude from the connotation of evolution the note of poten-
tiality and imperfection, and define it with Father Garrett
Pierse 12 as "the unfolding of multiplicity in unity," we may
also say with him in all reverence that in God "there is the
highest type of evolution."
There is also society in God, and the analogue of that cor-
porate unity which is characteristic of all social life, whether
on the human level, or on that of the animal herd. But
whereas in God both society and the unity that pervades it, is
perfect, with us both are imperfect. Each member of human
society, being finite, contributes to it what is partly the same
and partly different; and often there is strife. But in God,
each member is so perfect as to be not merely alike, but
wholly one in nature. Each has every divine attribute. Each
is such that He cannot not be.
There is also in God all the characteristics of experience
in so far as these imply perfection. It is in the experience of
Himself that the Son is generated as the object of the Father's
experience, and from the mutual experience of Father and
Son that the Spirit proceeds, synthesizing eternally in Him-
self the One and the Other that experience has distinguished.
It is evident that these characteristics are manifest in the
universe in which we live.
Our universe is a pluralistic universe, and yet has struc-
ture or plan. It is made up of individuals; some having con-
scious experience, others not; some intelligent, others merely
conscious. Yet each has a certain capacity or power, from
which proceeds action and change in itself and in other in-
dividuals. Individuals persons or things interact, and so
are inter-related and inter-dependent. There is also a one-
way dependence, from cause to effect, antecedent to conse-
quent, running throughout the whole course of time. Just as
we can say of the Son that, if the Father were not, the Son
would not be, and of the Spirit, that if the Father and Son were
not, the Spirit would not be; so can we say in the order of
intelligence, of thought, volition, and emotion, in the order of
life, of progeny and growth, and in the order of energy, of its
vast variety of transformation, that if the antecedent were
"Irish Theological Quarterly, July, 1919, "Some Modern Sidelights on the
Trinity "
302 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [June,
not, the consequent would never follow. But with this differ-
ence. In God, Father, Son and Spirit eternally are. In the
universe things occupy but a fraction of the time-series, and
in the rest of it are not. None the less, they depend upon and
proceed from one another.
Still more significant is the analogy which obtains between
the divine experience and its counterpart in nature. Expe-
rience is conscious inter-relation; and in God, where each
"centre of experience" has experience of the whole, it exists
in its highest form. With us, on the other hand, experience is
finite; is ever changing; and is mediated by a body between
which and its environment are many inter-relations of which
we are but dimly conscious or not conscious at all. Such inter-
relationship, moreover, and the tendency towards further re-
lationship manifests itself everywhere. Living things, as they
grow, enter into further relationship with their environment,
and by adaptation perfect this relationship; while in the
animal world, animate bodies vary their experience also by
gadding about. This is true (in the lower order of uncon-
scious relationship) also of the inanimate world. Gravitation,
electrical attraction and repulsion, chemical affinity seem to
indicate that the tendency to seek further relationship is char-
acteristic not merely of all life, but of all things, even to their
innermost parts; while inertia is analogous to our conscious
tendency to retain an experience which satisfies us. Every-
where nature repeats itself in varying degrees of perfection,
and everywhere, though always imperfectly, it manifests the
nature of the supreme and eternal Being upon Whom it
depends.
One might press the analogy further, and with St. Augus-
tine and St. Thomas, apply it especially to man. One might
seek an analogue of the procession of the Spirit from the
Father and Son in man's dual faculty of intelligence and will,
from which issues action, conscious and physical. One might
see it again in the duality of sex and the unity of their off-
spring. But this will suffice. Our knowledge of the Trinity
does not come to us through nature, but by way of divine
revelation; yet, once we possess that knowledge, we can see
how there are vestigia Trinitatis everywhere in nature. Even
as in God there is unity, personality, number, relation,
experience, procession, so are these characteristics deep-
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 303
rooted and fundamental in the universe which God has
created.
The first stage of our inquiry is at an end. God has ex-
pressed Himself, not only internally in the Word which is one
with Himself, but also ad extra, and for our benefit. Except
for the intelligent beings who dwell within it, the universe
would be meaningless and futile. It is meant for us; exists
entirely for our profit. From it we may learn of God, and the
more we know of God the more we realize how God is mani-
fest in the universe.
Yet with it we are never content, but ever seek further
and yet further experience, both as individuals and as a race.
This fact is significant in more ways than one, and again, I
think, the fundamental doctrine of our Catholic faith should
help us to solve the problems that arise from the problem of a
universe which not only changes but evolves. Of this we will
write in a subsequent article.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE.
BY W. H. KENT, O.S.C.
N the course of a debate, in the British House of
Commons, on the question of Irish self-deter-
mination, Mr. David Lloyd George, the Welsh
Prime Minister of England, made a characteristic
speech in disparagement of the Irish claim to
nationhood. Adopting a line which he had taken on a former
occasion, he laid special stress on the language question, and
drew an invidious comparison, in this matter, between Wales
and Ireland. Wales, as he observed, which did not claim to
set up as a separate republic, had maintained its own ancient
language; and has, he added, "a living literature, which I
know." In Ireland, on the contrary, even the seditious papers
which had been seized by the Government, were written in
English. And he sneered at the artificial attempts to revive
the Irish language in recent years.
It may be well to remark in passing that, in any case, the
right to existence as an independent and separate nationality
cannot be made to depend on the use of a distinctive national
language. For, if once we adopted this criterion, what would
become of the Republic of Switzerland? Nay, what justifica-
tion would be found, in that case, for the triumphant self-
determination of the original United States in 1776? And the
claims of the younger South American Republics would all be
left in the same dubious condition. To interpose yet another
remark, it is strange to find a responsible statesman choosing
this present moment for scoffing at a movement of linguistic
revival. For all that is passing just now in Eastern Europe
proves the vitality and spontaneous character of these move-
ments of national revival, and the possibility of recovering lost
ground, even when the case might well seem to be hopeless.
Eighty years ago, the Czech language and literature were at
a lower ebb, in Prague itself, than our Gaelic has ever reached
in Ireland. In the city where it is now the language of govern-
ment, of literature and of learning, Bohemians were once
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 305
ashamed to be overheard speaking a word of Czech, lest they
should be mistaken for ignorant peasants from the country.
Those who know the strength and vitality of the present
movement of Gaelic Revival, and are also familiar with the
history of similar national movements in many other lands,
need not be greatly troubled by the English Prime Minister's
gibes and flouts and sneers. But there is just one point in his
comparison between Wales and Ireland which may suggest a
fear that there is, after all, some ground for misgiving. Wales,
he assures us, has a living literature plainly implying that
Ireland has no such literature in her own language. And
students of literary history who know that a national literature
is the gradual growth of ages, a living organism requiring time
for its development, may well be left wondering how this
want is to be supplied. Instead of attempting to answer this
question, it may be more to the point to ask another: "Is it
true that Ireland has no living literature in her own Celtic
language?"
It is certainly well worth while to ask and answer this
question. For there are a good many patriotic Gaels who
would hardly be prepared to take up this challenge, and tell
the world something about our living Gaelic literature. This
is scarcely surprising. For many millions of Irishmen have
lost the old language of their fathers, and among those who
have some knowledge of Gaelic and know something of its
history, many are but imperfectly acquainted with the story
of our national literature. Students of mediaeval Irish history,
for example, the readers of Mrs. J. R. Green's admirable
sketch, "The Making of Ireland," must needs know something
of the Gaelic culture which prevailed in that bright period of
life and promise, when the bardic schools were flourishing,
and Irish art and Irish manufactures were still known to the
continental nations. But too many are under the impression
that it all went under with the breakup of the native system
in the disastrous wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies.
To form a just estimate of the vitality of Gaelic literature
and appreciate the rich resources of the language, one should
study the old Gaelic and the new, the Irish and the Scottish
for both are branches of one rich, far-spreading literature
the old folk-tales and ballads, and the best modern work,
VOL. CXIII. 20
306 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
whether in prose or poetry. And one who can speak from this
experience may well feel it a duty to give some account, how-
ever partial and imperfect, of this living Gaelic literature.
It may be well, at the outset, to attack the -jupwrov <J>eQ8os
and insist that the Gaelic literature of Ireland did not go under
with the downfall of the native princes in the seventeenth cen-
tury. Dr. Douglas Hyde, speaking with an authority which
will not be gainsaid, says : "When the great Milesian and Nor-
man families began to lose their power in the seventeenth cen-
tury, a distinctly new school of poetry arose in Ireland, which
discarded the learning and the metres of the old bards, and
instead of carefully counting the syllables, as used to be the
case, counted only the accented syllables and lo! with a turn
of the hand, Irish poetry changed its form and complexion,
and from being an old man so bound up and swathed about
with rules and fetters that it could scarcely breathe or see,
it burst out into a blooming young maiden dressed in all the
colors of the rainbow. Then, indeed, poetry became the hand-
maid of the many, not the mistress of the few; then, indeed,
through every nook and corner of the island the populace,
neglecting all bardic training, burst out into passionate
song.
"What the popular ballads of the folk had been like prior
to the seventeenth century we have no means of knowing.
No scribe would demean his learned pen by committing them
to paper; but from that date down to the beginning of the
present (nineteenth) century, the bards the great houses being
fallen turned instinctively to the general public, and threw
behind them the metres that required so many years of study
in the schools, and dropped at a stroke several thousand
words, which no one understood, except the great chiefs or
those trained by the poets, while they broke out into beautiful
but at the same time intelligible verse, which no one who has
once heard and learned is ever likely to forget. This is to my
mind the rich glory of the modern Irish nation; this is the}
sweetest creation of Gaelic literature; this is the truest
note of the enchanting Irish siren, and he who has once
heard it and remains deaf to its charm has neither heart for
song nor soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last two
centuries is the most sensuous attempt to convey music in
words ever made by man. It is absolutely impossible to con-
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 307
vey the hisciousness of sound, richness of rhythm and perfec-
tion of harmony in another language!" 1
This pleasing picture of the change which came over the
face of Irish Gaelic poetry in the seventeenth century may well
have an interest for lovers of mediaeval Latin literature. For
it presents a remarkable analogy to the transformation of
our Latin hymnody when quantitative verse and the elaborate
metrical laws of classic antiquity gave place to the freer and
more melodious songs of Jacopone da Todi, and Adam of St.
Victor and Jerome of Speier.
As this remarkable lecture on "The Last Three Centuries
of Irish Literature" was delivered in English to a London
audience, most of whom, it may be supposed, had no knowl-
edge of Gaelic; the lecturer refrained from citing any pas-
sages in the original. Some lovers of Gaelic song will recall
the familiar words of Savourneen Deelish :
Ba bhronach an la ud ar sgaras 6m* cheud gradh
's a mhuirnin dilis Eibhlin 6g!
Do phogas a deora, 's mo chroidhe 'stig dh' a gheur-chradh,
's a mhuirnin dilis Eibhlin 6g!
Ba bhan i a h-aghaidh lem' bhraghaid, feadh na h-uaire,
Ba tais i a lamh, ni raibh marmar ni b' fhuaire,
's gur bh' eol dom gur siorruidhe mo sgaradh 6m' stuaire!
's a mhuirnin dilis Eibhlin 6g!
But the first example that occurred to the present writer
was a passage in the "Aithrighe," or penitential hymn of
Seaghan de Hordha (John Hore), who may be fitly called the
Harmonious Blacksmith of County Clare:
A Dhia ta shuas feuch anuas
's reidh mo ghuais anabaidh
's leig me ad chuan gleigeal suathain,
Naomhtha buan-t-seasamhach:
A dhe na m-Buadh dein dam truagh,
Air theacht do 'n uair mharbhthach;
's na leig me uait fein le fuaith,
A b-peinn le sluagh Acheroin.
1 "The Last Three Centuries of Gaelic Literature." By Douglas Hyde, LL.D.
(An Chraoibhin Aoibhinn.) Being the Inaugural Address Delivered Before the Irish
Literary Society of London for the Session 1894-1895. The Lord Chief Justice of Eng-
land (Lord Russell of Killowen) in the Chair. (The italics are mine.)
308 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
The musical vowel harmonies in these lines may well serve
as samples of the new poetry so well described in our quota-
tion from Dr. Hyde's lecture. But a further interest attaches
to the work of this blacksmith poet. For its date suggests a
comparison with the verse of his younger contemporary,
Donald M'Leod, known as "Am Bard Sgiathanach" the Skye
Bard. Seaghan de Hordha, who was born in Dunaha, in the
western part of County Clare, flourished about 1780. And
Donald M'Leod was born in Durness, in the Isle of Skye, about
1785. The nearness in time and the distance in place make it
unlikely that the one could have been influenced by the other.
For though the songs of the Clare blacksmith were justly
prized in his own country, they can hardly have found their
way to Skye in the poet's lifetime. And if we find the same
note sounded in the songs of Am Bard Sgiathanach, it can only
be because this native music comes from sources that are
farther back in our Gaelic history, or springs spontaneously
from the genius of the language. For this reason, it may be of
interest to compare the following stanza from Donald M'Leod's
"Smeorach nan Leodach" with the above passage from the
"Aithrighe Sheaghain de Hordha."
's iomadh huaidh fo stuaidh mo bhalla,
Chuidreadh ruaig air sluagh a caraid,
Nach dean gluasad gun ruaim calla,
Dorainn fuathais a chuain fhala'.
While Dr. Douglas Hyde bears striking testimony to the
long-continued vitality of the native Irish literature, and even
sets the poetry of these later centuries above that of the
mediaeval period, strange to say, he strikes a despondent note.
For he speaks as if this rich literature had at length come to
an end. In this, happily, he has proved to be unduly pessi-
mistic. And it is only fair to add that in the five-and-twenty
years that have elapsed since this lecture was delivered, he
has done much to refute his own statements, and falsify his
own predictions. For the Gaelic League, which he founded,
has rallied what then seemed to be the sinking forces of the
Irish Gaels. And his own Irish writings, both in prose and
poetry, give us a pleasing practical proof that our national
literature is still living.
1921.] A LIVING HUSH LITERATURE 309
If we confine our attention to some parts of the country,
or to some classes of society, there might seem to be ground
for thinking that the Gaelic literature, not to say the language,
was dead or dying. But, look further afield, and you may
soon find that it is being cultivated, possibly in unsuspected
places. For we have Scotland to reckon with as well as Ire-
land. What student of Greek literature would be content to
confine his reading to any one dialect alone? For whichever
he may select, he must needs lose some of the greatest of
Greek authors. Homer, and Herodotus, Theocritus and Plato,
all have their part in the glory that was Greece, though all use
different forms of the same melodious language. And so, in
like manner, the lover of Gaelic literature should not confine
himself to Irish or Scottish Gaelic alone, but should rather
claim his share in all the treasures which are the common
heritage and glory of the sea-sundered children of the Gael.
On this point, I am happy to be able to claim the support of
Dr. Douglas Hyde himself. For when, some eight years ago,
I advocated this view in an article on "The Greater Gaedheal-
tachd," published in tha Scottish organ, Guth no. Bliadhna,
Dr. Hyde, in a paper entitled "Comhairle an Athar Ceannt,"
which appeared in the next number of the review, was good
enough to express his approval of this policy of literary co-
operation.
To point to the living Gaelic literature of Scotland as a
support and encouragement to that of Ireland, may seem
open to the proverbial reproach that we are attempting to
prove a thing unknown by something even less known "ig-
notum per ignotius." For if Englishmen, and Anglicized
Celts, know little or nothing of our Irish literature, their ignor-
ance of Scots-Gaelic literature is, in some respects, yet more
remarkable. This is in many ways more remarkable than
their attitude to Irish and Welsh literature, because Walter
Scott and his disciples have awakened a Widespread interest
in the romantic history of Scotland. And it may be safely
said that there is no phase of Anglo-Scottish history in which
literature plays such an important part in political struggles
as that which tells of the Jacobite risings. Most English and
Scottish readers are familiar with the fact that there is a rich
ballad literature which gives vivid expression to the loyalty
of Scottish Jacobites to the Stuart princes, and their cordiaj
310 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
aversion for the Hanoverian usurpers. "Over the water to
Charlie" is a familiar example of the one kind, and "The wee,
wee German Lairdie," of the other. And the student of history
can readily understand how those stirring songs helped to
quicken and strengthen these two feelings of loyalty to the
rightful king and loathing for the foreign usurper.
These same readers must also be familiar with the fact
that the main body of the Jacobite army was composed of
Highland clansmen to whom English, or the Scottish of the
Lowlands, was a foreign language, and who must, therefore,
remain wholly unmoved by these spirited Saxon songs and
ballads. This should compel the historical student to ask
whether there was not some corresponding Jacobite ballad
literatuf e in Gaelic. For it could hardly be that a small sec-
tion of the army which marched into the heart of England and
shook the Hanoverian throne, moved to the stirring strains
of martial music, while the main body went on its way dumb.
Yet how many readers have taken the trouble to ask this
obvious question?
Fine as they are, the best of the Lowland ballads when
they are set beside the work of our Gaelic bards,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, are as water unto wine.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether the whole of the Jacobite
poetry in English, or Lowland Scottish, could bear a com-
parison with the work of a single Gaelic bard, Alexander Mac-
Donald, better known to Gaels as MacMhaighster Alasdair.
Apart from the music of his language, and the martial spirit
that inspires his words, there is a genuineness and reality in
MacDonald's songs that is wanting in some otherwise excellent
Jacobite poetry. For the bard himself bore his part in the
Fusing. One of his songs to the Prince, "O! Thearlaich mhic
Sheumais," was sung by him when the flag was unfurled in
Glenfinnan, while Prince Charlie rested on his knee. Nor was
he one of those who forsook the cause in the hour of danger
and disaster. His later poems, when all was over, such as his
fine "Oran do Mhac Shimidh," or ode on the death of Mac-
Shimidh, known to Saxons as Simon Lord Lovat, who was
executed in 1746, breathes the same fiery spirit of Jacobite
loyalty and hatred of the Hanoverians. The poetry of Mac-
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 311
Donald and his contemporary, Duncan Ban Maclntyre, "Don-
nacha Ban nan Oran" (Fairhaired Duncan of the Songs), is a
rich, living literature pulsating with the life of the Gaelic
people, but English and Anglo-Scottish readers are gracefully
unaware of its existence.
These poets, it is true, flourished more than a hundred
years ago. But some good judges are disposed to regard the
Scots-Gaelic poetry of our own days as equal to the best work
of the eighteenth century. Here, too, as in the days of the
Jacobite risings, the literature reflects the national movements
and the political struggles. The poetry of the sweet singer
of Skye, Mary MacPherson (Mairi, Nighean Iain Bhain) owed
much of its inspiration to the Crofter movement of the
eighties. And echoes of the same movement are heard in the
melodious songs of Neil MacLeod. The "Dain agus Grain"
of the Skye poetess were first published in 1891, and the third
edition of MacLeod's "Clarsach an Doire" appeared in 1902.
But their work is as little known to their English-speaking
contemporaries as was that of the bards of the eighteenth cen-
tury. How little MacDonald's fine poems were known to the
Southron may be gathered from the fact that even the Jacobite
Johnson could repeat, as Boswell tells us, "with great energy"
the bitter lines on Lord Lovat's execution. For their whole
point is that, while many of various classes mourn for Kil-
marnock, Balmerino or Derwentwater, no one, whether
Whig or Tory, whether the fair, or the brave, or the honest,
can lament for Lovat, who, if this English versifier is to be
believed, was false to all parties alike. Neither Johnson nor
Boswell, nor indeed any of the later editors of the famous
biography, would seem to be aware that the greatest of Jacob-
ite bards had given this unlamented Lovat the noblest elegy
of them all.
To bring the main question at issue to a simple, practical
test, it may be well to consider what would be the real position
of our ancient tongue, at this present moment, if it had no
living literature. In these circumstances, one who wished to
write in Irish would be in a hard case. Gn one hand he
would have the colloquial Gaelic of the day, ex hypothesi,
without literary form. And, on the other, he would have the
writings of old authors full of archaic words and obsolete
phrases. He might well envy the French or English writers,
312 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
who rejoice in the possession of models of their own days,
to the command of a language at once literary and living.
English literature, it is true, gained new life and vigor, in the
days of the Romantic Movement, by coming into fresh contact
with the old ballads and with mediaeval poetry. But the work
of revival would have been far more arduous and its success
more doubtful, if there had been no sort of historical con-
tinuity and no current literary forms and conventions. Even
in prose, new writers can with difficulty work- out a style of
their own. And poetry would be yet more at a loss, in the
absence of metrical forms adapted to the language of their
own generation. This deficiency in form, and in what may be
called the literary mechanism of a language, would natur-
ally be most conspicuous, by reason of the contrast, in the case
of metrical translations of poetry. Even in more favorable
circumstances, a translation can seldom bear a comparison
with its original. And here the writer of the original poem
enjoys those advantages which, ex hypothesi, will be wanting
to the translator. On the other hand, patriotic songs written
in English have played such an important part in Irish polit-
ical movements, that the advent of the Gaelic Revival must
naturally create a wish to see these popular songs rendered in
the old language of Ireland. As might have been expected,
most of the familiar favorites have now been done into Gaelic.
And it is comparatively easy to see whether these translations
show any tokens of the poverty and want of form that belong
to a language without a living literary tradition.
Some of these songs, it may be remarked, notably In-
gram's immortal "Memory of the Dead," might well tax the
powers of a master of the art of translation, with all the ad-
vantages of a rich literary language at his command. It may
be doubted, indeed, whether Father Prout, himself, could have
given us a French version worthy of the occasion. The famil-
iar abbreviation of the date, dignified by all its tragic associa-
tions, comes with fine effect in the abrupt question of the
opening line of the original
Who fears to speak of '98?
Rut how is anything so prosaic and unmanageable as a date
to be rendered with equal effect in another language? It is
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 313
hard for a translator to be confronted with such a problem,
in the opening stanza of the poem. But, could any master of
metrical art, using the most cultivated literary language have
rendered the whole stanza more admirably than Dr. Douglas
Hyde has done in his fine Gaelic version?
An uair a chaineann siad ghradh
Na ndaoine nach bhfuil beo,
Bhfuil naire ort aon fhocal radh
Ar ocht gceud acht d6?
Ni '1 ann ach traill no droch-chine^l
A mhasluigheas a thir,
Acht oganaigh mar ta sibh,
Sibh olfas gloine fhior.
As has been suggested, a French reading of this stanza
might well be a task to tax the powers of the ingenious.
Father Prout himself, albeit he was not baffled by "The night
before Larry was stretched." For, though the English num-
eral, "ninety-eight," lends itself readily to song, what can a
poor poet do with the cumbersome "quatre-vingt-dix-huit?"
This is in curiously close agreement with the ordinary Irish
form of the same number, to wit, "ocht-deug a's cheithre
fichid" (eighteen and four score"). Finding this too long,
some recent writers have devised such expressions as "Nocha
a h-Ocht," or "Ocht a's nocha," and one Gaelic translation of
"The Rising of the Moon" has even dragged in the English
number. But An Chraoibhin Aoibhinn has surely found a
far better solution of the difficulty in his "ocht gceud deug
acht do," i. e., "eighteen hundred save two" 1798. The agree-
ment between the French and Gaelic forms for "eighty" and
"ninety," it may be remarked, is no mere coincidence. It
means, rather, that the Gaul, here at any rate, still keeps to
the old Celtic custom of counting by scores even in his neo-
Latin language. Possibly, the Biblical English "three score
years and ten" has a similar origin. For this is the ordinary
method of expressing "seventy" in Welsh and in Breton, as
well as in Gaelic.
Fine as it is, Dr. Hyde's "Cuimhne na Marbh" does not by
any means stand alone. Of many other instances, in which
translators have been singularly successful in rendering both
the meaning and the spirit of their originals, we may recall
314 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
the same Irish singer's version of the English verses of "Shule
Agra," the Gaelic "Rising of the Moon," by William Williams,
and the more familiar versions of "God Save Ireland," and
"The Soldiers' Song." Some of these were rendered quite
recently, but the second example was published some forty
years ago. And, to go back nearly eighty years, we have
Archbishop MacHale's spirited Gaelic translations of many of
Moore's Irish melodies, notably "Let Erin Remember," and
"The Minstrel Roy," which were published in 1842. The same
indefatigable Irish scholar has also left us a Gaelic version of
the Pentateuch, and a metrical translation of the earlier books
of Homer's Iliad. A scholarly Scottish poet, Ewen MacLach-
lan, who died in 1822, while Dr. MacHale was yet a young
man, had already rendered the first seven books of the Iliad
into his own Gaelic of Lochaber. Here, we are reminded of
a later Scottish writer who takes high rank as a translator,
Mary MacKellar (nee Cameron), who translated Queen Vic-
toria's Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands
into Gaelic. Her rendering of Aytoun's fine ballad on "The
Death of Montrose" is surely one of the most successful metri-
cal translations of poetry to be found in any language : it is at
once so close to the English original both in letter and spirit,
so easy and idiomatic, and such fine Gaelic poetry.
All this work could never have been accomplished in a
language left without a living literature. And to those who
accept that gloomy view of Gaelic history, these translations-
even if they stood alone, and were not, as they are, surrounded
by a rich mass of original poetry of rare merit might even
present an inexplicable problem. The French poetry of today
would not be what it is but for those early minstrels who sang
the "chansons de geste," and the great mediaeval poets, and
Ronsard and the Pleiade, and the classic school of the "grand
siecle" and the romantic poets of a later generation. In the
English Elizabethan poetry, again, some writers have recognized
the blending of two streams, represented by Chaucer and the
author of "Piers Plowman." The first may be traced to its
source in the old French "chansons de geste" and the second
to the alliterative song of the Saxons and Norsemen. And the
influence of both may still be felt in the music of later Eng-
lish poetry.
Even if we assume for the moment that some fragmentary
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 315
Gaelic literature had survived, it might seem that it could be
of little help to some of the poets whose names have been
mentioned here. For a village blacksmith like Seaghan de
Hordha could not be in the way of getting much literary cul-
ture. And a cobbler's wife, like Mary MacPherson, who only
learned to read print, but could not write, could scarcely be
expected to cultivate the muse to much advantage. To those
who know the true facts of the case, the melodious verse of
these Gaelic singers, both in Ireland and Scotland, cannot pre-
sent any very difficult problem. For the truth is that they
were drawing their inspiration, and learning the mystery of
their art, from one of the oldest and most living literary tra-
ditions in the world. As has been said, there is a true and
continuous stream of poetic literature in other lands, such as
France and England, and the modern poets, however indi-
rectly and unconsciously, owe much of their music to minstrels
of an earlier age. But, for the most part, it must be con-
fessed, the work of these older singers is apt to be forgotten
and neglected, and left to specialists or antiquarians. But it is
far otherwise in the land of the Gaels. For here the old
national literature, a rich and varied mass of prose tales and
legends and ballad poetry, lives on in the memory of the peo-
ple, who learn it, not from books but from the beul-aithris
or oral tradition.
As the singing or recitation of these fine old tales and
ballads has long been a popular institution among our people,
it is no wonder that many of these who have been accustomed
to hear them from their childhood should have their memory
stored with the music of these old songs and legends. And
those who were themselves born with the gift of song, can
be in no want of models to teach them the accomplishment
of verse. Mary MacPherson's poems, between eight and nine
thousand lines, were taken down from her recitation. And her
editor, after remarking on this feat of memory, goes on to
add: "And she has at least half as much more of her own,
and twice as much which she is able to repeat of floating un-
published poetry, mainly that of Skye and the Western Isles."
The old literature, handed down by oral tradition, includes prose
tales, as well as poetry. A good deal of this prose is strongly
marked by one of the chief characteristics of our poetry a
bewildering wealth of alliterative adjectives. The Fenian
316 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
folk-tale, "Toruigheacht Dhiarmuda Agus Ghrdinne" ("The
Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne) is an example of this style
of Gaelic prose. An excellent edition of it, with English trans-
lation, glossary and notes, was published some thirty years
since, by Messrs. Gill & Son, Dublin, for the Society for the
Preservation of the Irish Language. A far more important
landmark in the history of Irish prose is Keating's History of
Ireland, an edition of which, on much the same lines as the
aforesaid "Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne t " was included
in the same publishers' "Gaelic Union Publication," the first
part appearing in 1880. Some twenty years later, a new edi-
tion of the text was brought out by the Irish Texts Society.
After speaking of the Four Masters, and other great prose
writers of that age, Dr. Hyde adds: "Of these men, Keating as
a writer was the greatest. He is a literary man, a poet, pro-
fessor and historian in one. He brought the art of writing
limpid Irish to its highest perfection, and even since the pub-
lication of his history of Ireland some two hundred and fifty
(two hundred and seventy-six) years ago, the modern lan-
guage may be said to have been by him almost stereotyped."
Keating's work not only stands as a model of prose style
for writers of the present day, but has two marked features
which make it a connecting link with our older language. It
seems to hold a central place, symbolizing and establishing
the historical unity and continuity of Irish literature. One of
these features is the use of several archaic verbal forms, which
gives a pleasing flavor of antiquity to the historian's style,
is appropriate to his subject matter, and assists his readers in
the study of older writers. The other feature, of far greater
importance, is the abundance of his poetical quotations.
These verses, of a far earlier age than the historian's own
prose text, familiarize the reader with another form of the
language and afford him many examples of the classic metres
of Irish poetry. In his sermons, as Dr. Hyde tells us, Keating
sometimes indulged in the rhetorical alliteration of the old
tales. Another preacher, of a later generation, Dr. James
O'Gallagher, Bishop of Raphoe, and afterwards of Kildare
and Leighlin, who flourished in the first quarter of the eigh-
teenth century, was master of a simple, terse and vigorous
style. His sermons were often preached by others, at his own
desire, as well as by himself, and may be read still in the excel-
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 317
lent edition published by the late Canon Ulick Bourke, of St.
Jarlath's Tuam, in 1877. They, too have furnished a model
of style to many readers.
The poets who were so successful in giving a musical
Irish rendering to songs written in another tongue, can be
heard to yet more advantage in original work of their own.
Thus, to take one obvious example, two very different songs
of Dr. Hyde's may well be favorites with many Irish readers,
one a sprightly love song to the air of "An Criiiscin Lan,"
and the other a pathetic poem on "The Croppy's Death" ("Bas
an 'Chroppi'"), which has all the witching music of Heine's
"Lorelei." Among the numerous writers of vigorous Gaelic
prose who are doing good work in our periodical literature,
one who veils his identity under the "nom de guerre" of "Cu
Uladh" is worthy of special mention. Apart from his vigorous
style, the very language he uses has a value of its own as a
political object lesson. It is a common superstition that Ulster
differs from the other provinces of Ireland in race and lan-
guage and religion. For too many Englishmen, and possibly
others as well, seem to mistake the northeastern corner for the
whole province. For this reason it is surely significant that
some of the most trenchant political papers from the Irish
national standpoint are those which "Cu Uladh" writes in his
own Ulster Gaelic. Such, for example, was his striking article,
"An t-Athru Mor i n-Eirinn," which appeared in Guth na
Bliadhna on the morrow of the general election of 1918.
Gaelic literature is still living. And as the movement of
revival gains ground and Irishman, and Scotsman, too, return
to their national languages, this literature is likely to become
more widely known throughout the world, and has a bright
future before it. The success that has already crowned other
revivals of the same kind, for example, the Czech movement
in Bohemia, may serve to reassure those Gaels who are dis-
posed to take a less hopeful view of our present situation.
But apart from the pessimists who question our prospects of
succeeding in this movement of Gaelic revival of restoration,
there are others who are disposed to doubt whether such a
success is desirable. Some feel that, however much a restora-
tion of Gaelic to its rightful place as the national language of
Ireland might gratify popular sentiment, or patriotic pride,
or racial prejudice, the triumph of English culture would
318 A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE [June,
really do far more to promote the true interests of Irish
literature and Irish education. This view of the matter may
well seem plausible to Englishmen or to foreigners who are
acquainted with the rich English literature and know little or
nothing of the Gaelic. But on further reflection it will be
found to be an illusion.
Here, as elsewhere, the true interests of a national liter-
ature and the best hopes for the future lie with the native
language of the people. And from the foreign language, and
the foreign culture, Ireland can only get a literature that
would be, at best, but second-rate and provincial. All the
arguments that tell in favor of Anglicizing Ireland might have
been urged with equal plausibility in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, in favor of Gallicizing England. For French was
then the language of the ruling classes, of court and parlia-
ment and schools: and it was also the language of a rich and
flourishing literature. But the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe
would never have been a match for the French of Paris in the
realms of literature: still less would it be able to vie with the
English of Stratford-on-Avon. And the same holds good of
Ireland. Here, too, the true sources of poetry, and of all liter-
ature in the highest sense, must be sought in the traditions of
the people and in the genius of the national language. It is
true some good work has been done by Irishmen who write in
English. But Anglo-Irish literature could scarcely bear com-
parison with that of England itself; nor could anyone who
knew them both put it on the same level as the Gaelic liter-
ature of Ireland. The literature that springs spontaneously
from the native sources and faithfully reflects national folk-
lore and legend and carries on the old literary tradition, must
needs be written in the olden tongue of Erin.
As simple, practical proof that our Gaelic literature is
still living, it may not be amiss to cite two Irish Gaelic books
well worthy to be considered by themselves, and apart from
the rest, as evidence of a special kind Seadna, the master-
piece of the late Canon O'Leary of Castle Lyons, or as he him-
self preferred to be called "An t-Athair Peadar," a venerable
writer lately lost to us who has left behind him many valuable
works in Irish; and the single volume containing the Gaelic
writings, short stories, poems and plays of our martyred first
President, Padraic Pearse. Both these books are literature in
1921.] A LIVING IRISH LITERATURE 319
the truest sense, stamped with the hallmark of genius. And
both of them, to be sure, are living and destined to live. For
the children of the Gael, if they be wise, will not willingly
suffer them to die. Travelers tell us of two or three books
that are generally to be found in the modest libraries of Eng-
lish settlers in far lands. If a student of Gaelic literature were
asked to select three books that ought to be found in the
homes of Irishmen who love their land and their language
and their national literature, he could hardly do better than
take Keating's History of Ireland, Father Peter's Seadna, and
the volume containing the Gaelic writings of Padraic Pearse.
The first, besides telling the fascinating story of Ireland in the
past, reflects the beauties of our olden literature. The second
paints a vivid picture of the Gaelic Ireland of today. And in
the third, a young writer of yet rarer genius, charms us by
the music of his language, his poetry, his lofty idealism and
his pure faith and patriotism. For a moment, the reader's
delight in these writings may be dimmed by sorrow, as he
thinks how this bright young life was cut short by the hands
of ruthless foemen, and the world was robbed of a genius
who had so much more to give us. But the blow has missed its
mark. Pearse is not dead. His writings still live, and will con-
tinue to live, among the brightest jewels in our living Irish
literature.
TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK.
BY FREDERICK SIEDENBURG, S.J.
E live in the day of the specialist. In the profes-
sions as well as in industry the principle of the
division of labor has long since been adopted,
and the real estate lawyer, the gas engineer, and
the goitre physician, have commended them-
selves to the approval of the world. The reason is not far to
seek. With the advance of knowledge the horizon always
widens and what seemed simple from a distance, becomes
complex when we draw near and study. To the uninitiated
social work seems an obvious task, but to those who know its
real significance, it is an intricate problem and to approach it
conscientiously requires study and practice, not to mention
the necessary prerequisites of character and social instinct.
Not without reason has social work been called a profession
and daily is it becoming more worthy of that name.
Social work, as its name implies, is associated with so-
ciety, i. e., the group, and hence in proportion as our groups
become large and complex does the need for social work grow.
The hamlet or the village does not need a Charity Organiza-
tion Society or an Association of Commerce, because the prob-
lems of village poverty and commerce are elementary and
readily solved. But the congested, complicated city, with the
poor and stranger within its gates, with its social lights and
shadows, with its virtue and its vice, and, above all, with its
shams and its deceits, presents social problems of distress and
delinquency that baffle even the wary and the knowing, and
in whose presence even science and experience are often un-
certain of a solution. Even out in the open country there is a
rich field for the social worker, although not for large social
organizations. For over a decade rural social workers have
demonstrated alike their economic and social value. They
have not only been the evangels of the best social thought and
action of the day, but they have also brought to the isolation
of the farm and ranch a community spirit fraught with valu-
1921.] TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK 321
able lessons of education, health and recreation, hitherto
thought impossible in country life.
But today, for the most part, we are living in large com-
munities. The 1920 Census assures us that we have ceased
to be a rural, and have become an urban, people. One-tenth
of our population live in three of our cities and one-quarter
live in sixty of our largest cities. This means, it is true, the
diffusion of metropolitan life, with its wealth, pleasures and
opportunities, but it likewise means the multiplication of pro-
letarian existence, with its poverty, disease, and the want of
a chance. Take the poverty problem of a large community; it
is but one of its hundred problems, and yet we cannot intel-
ligently approach it without a knowledge of its extent, of its
causes and effects, and of the remedies that have been tried;
of their failure and success. In other words, knowledge and
practice are necessary, and knowledge and practice mean
training.
Success in social work, as in everything else, depends on
the native ability of the worker and on his training. We can
have one without the other, and of the two, natural ability is
preferable to training, since social work has to do primarily
with human beings with whom tact and judgment and sym-
pathy go farther than any kind of theory or technique. If,
however, to the natural social worker we add training, that is,
the knowledge of the best thought and experience of others,
we approach the ideal.
What should be this training of the social worker and is
there a standard course of instruction for social work?
Whether the social worker be a court officer, a settlement
worker, or a visiting nurse, he must make investigations, he
must keep records, he must recognize a normal standard of
living, and he must especially know that individual treatment
is the only safe, as well as successful, mode of action. Again,
he must know that he has no right to treat cases regardless of
the experience of others preserved in case records; he must
know that medical, and even legal, agencies are closely related
to social agencies. Indeed, he will not be able intelligently
to give even direct relief, unless he has a social point of view,
and realizes the maladjustment of many of our social habits
and institutions. He must be familiar with civic problems
that affect charities and correction, and he must be interested
VOL. cxni. 21
322 DRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK [.tune,
in public health and hygiene, in tenement control and housing
laws. He must distinguish between defectives and delinquents,
between normals and subnormals, and especially he must
distinguish between persons and conditions. And who shall
teach him prudence and tact and, above all things, sympathy?
It might be well at the outset to define two words in the
subject under discussion, namely standard and social. By a
standard course of instruction it is not meant that there is a
course in practice today recognized as such by any authority
or organization, but by a standard course we may well mean a
feasible and adequate course of instruction in the principles
and methods involved in social work that will be most bene-
ficial to the indigent, the defective and the distressed in gen-
eral. The character of the instruction and the extent of the
field work and the time given to each are clearly variable
factors, and, of course, affect the general result.
The important word, however, is social. By social is
meant the antithesis of individual, and it implies that the
social worker, although dealing with the individual, never
loses sight of the welfare of the group, that is, of society. All
social work may be said to take one of three forms. The
first of these is temporary or direct relief. Under modern
conditions social work is not worthy of the name if it stops
with temporary or direct relief. Relief is often as imperative
as its need; it is self-evident, for it is immediate aid of an
immediate need, for example, food for the hungry, shelter for
the homeless, medical aid for the sick. This direct relief,
however, should not be continued more than is absolutely
necessary.
Second, social work may take the form of rehabilitation,
that is, aid given to remove the cause rather than the effect of
distress; thus making the charity "clients," as Miss Richmond
calls them, help themselves back to normal life. This is
obviously more difficult, and clearly more beneficial than tem-
porary or direct relief. It is constructive social work.
Third, we have social work in its highest form, where the
evil is foreseen and the need of relief anticipated by preven-
tion. In place of belated efforts of direct or constructive
relief, we devote our energies to prevent sickness or accidents
or crime or unemployment. Instead of doctoring and burying
the consumptive or even of curing the incipient patient by
1921.] TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK 323
fresh air and wholesome food, we campaign for anti-tubercu-
losis legislation and anti-tuberculosis modes of living. This is
preventive social work.
Here is the field of social work; it is extensive and com-
plicated and not to be done in an ofMiand manner. It pre-
supposes on the part of the efficient worker, knowledge and
tact and not a little experience. This means that the worker
must be trained. In fact, the need for social work is no longer
a debatable question. As early as 1898, specialized schools
were organized to give this training. Today, there are hun-
dreds of students in such schools in our larger cities. The
training is of one or two years duration, and the weekly
schedule usually includes ten hours of instruction and fifteen
hours of field work under expert direction. The curricula
of these schools are much the same and embrace such studies
as Economics, Social History, Civics, Social Ethics, the care of
dependents, defectives and delinquents, Public Health and
Hygiene, Housing and Town Planning, Child Welfare, Prob-
lems of Immigration, Colonization, Industrial Betterment, and
the like. Here there is not only a question of training in char-
ity methods, but a study of the economic and historical back-
ground of the social ills that make social work necessary. It
is a scientific study of social problems with a view to seeking
a scientific solution.
Whether given by the fully equipped professional school
or by special lecture courses, the essentials of a standard
course of instruction in social work must be the same. The
difference can only be one of quantity and degree. Conse-
quently, every course would seem to divide itself into three
parts: (a) An introduction or survey of the field; (b) the tech-
nique of social work; (c) practice and inspection.
(A) A survey of the field would be had by lectures and
prescribed reading tending to stimulate and prepare the mind
of the student for the more scientific phases of the course,
giving him a perspective of the field of social service past and
present; showing the inter-relation of the various parts, the
necessity of technique and the possibility of learning methods
from a thoughtful understanding of purpose and practice.
Such lectures and reading should deal with the following sub-
jects:
First, the origin and history of the family considered
324 TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK [June,
from a historical, ethical and sociological viewpoint. In treat-
ing the ethics of the family, stress should be laid on the sound
moral, as well as scientific, principle of keeping the family
together as much as possible. The family is the natural unit
of society and, consequently, everything that tends to disrupt
it, tends likewise to disrupt society itself. Here, too, the rights
of parents, as well as of children, and the all-importance of
safeguarding the morality and religion of the latter should
be insisted upon.
Second, the causes of poverty treated from the economic,
the social and the physiological viewpoint. Few, if any, cases
of permanent poverty and distress can be said to be indi-
vidual, because study and experience show the inevitable fac-
tors of environment, heredity and economic maladjustment.
Third, mediaeval and modern methods of charity. Here
the origin of the different systems and their relationships
should be carefully traced and the methods adopted in dif-
ferent countries and ages contrasted. Incidentally, it may be
remarked that we are not always aware of the rich heritage of
method, as well as of purpose, bequeathed to us from the
Middle Ages; mention need but be made of day nurseries, tag-
days, loan banks, and open air sanitaria which, under differ-
ent names, flourished in those days.
With regard to the survey of the field of social work, no
one can make such a survey without being touched by the
spirit of human brotherhood, and being inspired to do social
work as distinguished from individual work. We then realize
that many of the ills that afflict society are not isolated and
individual, but that society as a whole is infected with them,
and that any remedy worth while must be on a large scale
and must aim at society itself plainly, it must be social.
This brings to light the distinction between the charitable per-
son and the social worker. Both may benefit a person or
family in apparently the same way and for the same motive,
but the social worker adds to his work the consciousness that
he is at the same time benefiting society, and that the manner
of his work has this in view.
(B) Under the heading of technique might be included
lectures, reading and class discussion dealing with the follow-
ing subjects:
First, the history and principles of charity organizations
1921.] TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK 325
and, particularly, the purposes and methods of investigation.
Here would be in order open class discussion of actual case
records, with applications of suggested treatments and a con-
trasting of successful with unsuccessful methods. These dis-
cussions would quicken the observation of the student in ap-
plying the principles of social work, and also familiarize him
with the various agencies that concern themselves with the
different kinds of social work. With regard to investigations
and methods in general, while they should be scientific in every
detail, still they should not out-science science and make
methods an end instead of a means. The poor and distressed
should never be made mere material for card indexes and
poverty tracts. They should not be investigated more than is
necessary, and only on such points as are germane to the pur-
pose. Science and methods are imperative in modern social
work, but they must not rob the poor of their personality or
the investigator of his fellow human feeling.
Second, under technique should be studied the peculiar-
ities of indoor and outdoor social work, their advantages and
disadvantages. Here the range of study might reach from a
friendly visit to a family to the statistics of an institutional
budget or the efficiency of the International Red Cross. Here,
too, might be discussed many of our unsolved perplexing
questions, such as, "Is an institution or a private home best
for the dependent child or the delinquent child?"
Third, a study of the various types of agencies and
methods is also recommended. This part of the course should
be given by the heads of agencies and institutions, both public
and private. These could speak with authority on the history,
purpose, and methods of their respective organizations and
set forth their ideals, their plans for the future and the further-
ance of the special movements of which they, as leaders, are
a part.
Fourth, "statistics is history at rest," someone has said,
and surely social statistics are the history of social conditions.
Statistics and reports are essentials of our technique. The
student must know their value and uses. He must be able to
apply the general principles of statistics to the collection, pres-
entation, and interpretation of them in relation to poverty,
crime, feeblemindedness, etc. The course should also cover
the preparation of annual reports with suggestions for utiliz-
326 TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WORK [June,
ing material included in case records and in the files of social
organizations.
(C) The third and last general division of our standard
course is field work and visits of inspection. Field work is
the social student's laboratory, and affords him actual practice
under a recognized agency which has a trained staff. This
so-called field work furnishes a definite "social apprentice-
ship" to the student, and fits into practice the theory of the
lecture room and of the printed page.
Supplementing the field work are visits of inspection to
the different institutions with whose work the student is al-
ready somewhat familiar. Such visits put many facts and
conditions in the student's mind, far better than mere hearing
or reading could do. The reports of these visits made in writ-
ing, when criticized in class, are most helpful by contrasting
the ideal with the non-ideal institution, and develop in the
students an understanding of what to observe, expect and
criticize in plan, organization, and management.
In this course of training in social work, we have con-
sidered the essentials as they would be demanded by present
day needs, and to some our standard may seem impossible
and not attained even by the professional schools. That may
be true in regard to its completeness or its detail, but in its
essentials it is, and must be, followed whenever an effective
course of instruction in social work is aimed at. The two-
year professional course certainly approximates it, and spe-
cial lecture courses can readily give what is best in it and
what particularly pertains to conditions and methods, while
the scope and ideal of the professional course can, at least,
be indicated in its broad outline and its high lights.
Training which is another word for systematized com-
mon sense and experience making for efficiency is very im-
portant, and in all cases worth while, and yet we must admit
that it is not necessarily the most important element in the
formation of the social worker and, as a consequence, the best
course of instruction will sometimes fail to produce a skilled
and effective worker, because of that lack of native ability
and previous education which always play the largest part
in the ultimate product of any training. Social workers are
not made automatically, but even if the student has no par-
ticular aptitude for the work, still he could not take the course
1921.] NOTRE DAME CHAPELLE 327
of training which has been outlined without being impressed
that there is a social problem in general and a poverty prob-
lem in particular; that this problem is very complex and not
easy to solve, and that every man who loves God and his neigh-
bor ought to take a hand in its solution. The student will
likewise soon learn that it is difficult to find the best way and
that it is easy to blunder, verifying what Goethe somewhere
says : "To do is easy, to think is hard." In any case, even the
student who is without special ability but who has completed
a standard course in social work, will improve on the dictum
of the German poet, and do intelligently and think even more
intelligently.
NOTRE DAME CHAPELLE.
BY JESSIE LEMONT.
How quiet and majestic is the stone
Of the gray walls of Notre Dame Chapelle,
Where kneeling nuns their Ave's softly tell,
How silent has the deepening twilight grown !
These shadowy aisles where all earth's conflicts cease
And shrines are lighted and tall candles flame,
Murmur the mystic music of His Name,
Whisper the coming of the Prince of Peace.
And in the grotto on the rocks on high
Supernal symbol of the Mother of Love
With hands like folded wings of a white dove
That soars to Heaven after Calvary-
Behold! The Virgin glows like radiant Spring.
Around her lights like stars are blossoming.
FATHER VAN DEN BROEK.
BY ALBERT P. SCHIMBERG.
HE world knows naught of him. His name never
appeared in Who's Who, nor in a biographical
dictionary. It is absent from text-books from
which young American Catholics learn their
country's history. Even the Catholics of the State
in which he labored know little of the Rev. Theodore John Van
den Broek of the Order of St. Dominic, and of what he wrought
for the souls of men and for Christian civilization in the
Wisconsin woods.
But this unsung missionary, civilizer and colonizer lives
in the reverently grateful memory of the people of Little
Chute, a village on the Fox River, in the diocese of Green Bay.
There his bones are treasured, there his heroic life-story has
perennial interest for the children and children's children of
those whom he brought to this place from their old homes
across the sea.
And at the Keshena Reservation in Wisconsin, Father
Van den Broek's memory is kept green by the Catholic Indians.
These wards of the nation inherited the Faith from their fore-
bears, to whom Father Van den Broek preached Christ and
Him crucified before they were transferred from Little Chute,
before the missionary's countrymen superseded them in pos-
session of the village and the surrounding wilds. These In-
dians, on the Feast of Love of each year, hold the beautiful
Corpus Christi procession which the Dominican introduced
among their fathers.
Father Van den Broek was born in Amsterdam in 1803,
and was ordained to the holy priesthood after having entered
the Order of Preachers. In 1832 he was sent to the New
World, to the arduous mission field of Kentucky, the record of
which makes bravely bright pages in our annals. In 1834 he
entered the still more arduous field of Wisconsin, arriving on
July 4th of that year at Green Bay, site of St. Francis Xavier
mission, scene of the intrepid Jesuits' earliest outpost of Chris-
tianity in the territory wherein Marquette and Allouez and
1921.] FATHER VAN DEN BROEK 329
other soldiers of the Cross held aloft the banner of Christ with
Loyolan ardor.
In a letter to the editor of a Dutch Catholic newspaper,
called Godsdienstvriend, Father Van den Broek wrote, in 1843,
from "Grand Cocalin (now Kaukauna), above Green Bay, Wis-
consin Territory, North America:"
"The Bishop of Michigan sent me to Green Bay to the
so-called Groene Baay. ... On the sixth of December, 1836,
the Bishop sent three Redemptorist Fathers in my place. . . .
and I betook myself twenty-four miles higher up the river
into the woods, to the Indians, at a place called La Petite
Chute (Little Chute). ... An Indian woman at once built
me a hut or wigwam, about fifteen feet long and six feet high.
It was finished in half a day. I lived in it from Pentecost to
October (1837), meanwhile with the Indians I began to build
a church and parsonage. For six months the wigwam was
both my house and my church." 1
For years Father Van den Broek's mission embraced the
whole of Wisconsin Territory. He often read two Masses on
Sunday, one at Green Bay, one at Little Chute. In order to do
this, he had often to walk the distance of twenty- two miles be-
tween the two places. Besides Green Bay and Little Chute,
his mission stations included Butte des Morts, Fort Winne-
bago, near Portage City, Fond du Lac, Poygan, Calumet,
Prairie du Chien. In the letter of 1843 he told how he had
narrowly escaped death when his horse sank in a marsh on
the trail from Detroit to Green Bay, and then added : "Never-
theless the missionary must often make use of these unfre-
quented roads to visit distant Christians. . . . He must often
sleep under the open canopy of heaven with dry bread and
water for nourishment. ... I must often make a journey of
two hundred miles to visit the Winnebago Indians. Last
winter (1843), on one of these journeys, I was nearly frozen,
because in a range of sixty or seventy miles there is not a house
to be met with." 2
Nakedness nor shipwreck, lash nor prison came to this
Paul of the Middle West, but he knew hunger and thirst, ex-
treme cold and extreme heat, and was often in peril of his life.
He rode his horse through the forest, where the Indian trail
was vague, where the branches of trees swished and cut his
1 Annals of St. Joseph, De Pere, Wis., vol. xii., no. 11. 'Ibid.
330 FATHER VAN DEN BROEK [June,
face, or protruding roots or treacherous holes threw the beast
and tumbled the rider from the saddle. He walked long dis-
tances, and the pegs of his boots cut his feet cruelly. Often
his feet bled profusely before he could reach a human habita-
tion and have the pegs removed. He was lost in the wilderness
when his guide failed him. He slept under the skies, with his
saddle for pillow, the snow for his couch, the stars for tapers,
the howling of wolves for slumber-song.
The Indians loved him, but they were careless in provid-
ing him with food. Wolves and the Indians' wolf-like dogs
stole into his wigwam (where snakes, too, were frequent
visitors) and devoured his provisions. Worst of all to this son
of opulence and culture in the Old World, must have been
the absence of cleanliness. The Dutch woman is a symbol of
housewifely neatness. But the squaws of Father Van den
Broek's missions could never have qualified for this admir-
able distinction.
Father Van den Broek's success in converting the Indians
may be guaged from his letters. He told how his flock in-
creased from a few to fifty "who heard Mass in the open air:"
then to two hundred, so that he found it necessary to build a
church thirty feet long. Later the primitive house of worship
was lengthened to fifty feet, to accommodate the congregation
which numbered six hundred souls in 1843. Writing of the
visit of Bishop Lefebre to Little Chute in 1842, the missionary
reported that after a sojourn of three days, "the Bishop took
his departure, escorted by the Indians in the same manner
as they had received him. When the Bishop gave them his
blessing they fired a salute of fifty guns. The Bishop remained
standing and, with tears in his eyes, gave the good people an
admonition to remain true to the Faith. Wherever the Bishop
stopped on his Confirmation tour, he related the good impres-
sion that the faith of these newly converted made upon him." 3
Naturally, Father Van den Broek's chief concern was the
Christianization of his Indians, the salvation of their souls.
But he also civilized them, taught them to read, instructed
them in farming, in carpentry, masonry. To give them an ex-
ample, he did not deem it unseemly to put his consecrated
hands to such crude agricultural implements as were at his
command, or to wield ax and trowel.
8 Ibid.
1921.] FATHER VAN DEN BROEK 331
"I have school every day," he wrote to the Godsdien-
stvriend, "besides visiting the sick, and numberless journeys to
distant missions." He said his labor was "incredibly great,"
but that "nevertheless, I enjoy good health, and everything
through God's help is easy."
Beginning at the very beginning, with the Indian A, B, C,
this civilizer taught the savages to read the great Baraga's
prayer and catechetical books in their language. So excellent
a teacher was he, so receptive his red-skinned pupils, that
when Bishop Lefebre came to Little Chute they "sang on his
arrival Ecce Sacerdos Magnus and other hymns in their
language, also the Veni Creator. ... At High Mass all
sang in their language the Kyrie Eleison, Gloria, etc. In the
afternoon they sang Vespers, likewise in the Indian language.
. . . You never heard finer harmony than the Indians sang in
Gregorian chant." The Bishop gave Father Van den Broek
two hundred rosaries, "for, although the Indians can read,
the rosary still remains, and rightly so, their favorite form of
prayer," wrote this apostolic son of St. Dominic.
With the help of the Indians whom he civilized, the mis-
sionary built a new church, seventy feet long. This was com-
pleted in 1839 and placed under the patronage of St. John
Nepomucene, glorious martyr-witness to the inviolate seal of
confession.
The first season's crops, raised in the garden which he
himself had spaded and hoed, yielded plenty of corn and po-
tatoes for Father Van den Broek, and the Indians helped him
eat these first-fruits of his agricultural labors. The second
season the Indians, with a good will, assisted him, and the
virgin land gave forth an abundance of grains and vegetables.
"I have changed the land which was a wilderness into a rich
and fertile soil. This year (1840), I have harvested more than
four hundred bushels of grain, corn and buckwheat, two hun-
dred bushels of potatoes, etc. I have five oxen, three cows,
twenty pigs, three horses," wrote this missionary-farmer to a
priest in Rotterdam. "His Lordship (Bishop Loras of Du-
buque, Iowa Territory) affirmed that he had never seen a place
changed and improved so much in so few years, and said he
would not fail to report our work to the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Faith at Paris."
Thus Father Van den Broek labored with tireless zeal to
332 FATHER VAN DEN BROEK [June,
make Christians and civilized farmers and craftsmen of his
Indians. When they were transferred from Little Chute by
the Government, first to Lake Poygan, then to the Keshena
reservation, they took his teaching and his example with
them, and they and their descendants remained true to the
Faith, despite the efforts of proselytizers to win them away.
When his mother died in the Netherlands in 1844, Father
Van den Broek wished to cross the ocean to secure his inherit-
ance, that he might spend it in behalf of his beloved children
of the forest. But not until three years later, 1847, could he
leave his mission field.
With this journey to his native land, began the third
phase of Father Van den Brock's service to the Church and to
Christian civilization. While in the Netherlands, he issued a
booklet setting forth the bright prospects, religious freedom
and the rich yields of a virgin soil, awaiting Dutch immigrants
who would settle in Wisconsin. As a consequence, three
hundred and fifty of his compatriots sailed with him for the
New World when he embarked at Rotterdam in 1848.
Settling in and about Little Chute, this vanguard of Cath-
olic Dutch colonization was followed by large numbers, set-
tling throughout the Fox River valley and other sections of
northeastern Wisconsin. Off-shoots of the tree planted by
Father Van den Broek at Little Chute sprang up in Michigan,
Nebraska, Minnesota, Oregon, and other States. Today thou-
sands of excellent citizens of the Republic venerate the Do-
minican missionary as the Moses who led their fathers into
the Promised Land of wider opportunities.
Not only did Father Van den Broek benefit his country-
men by bringing them to this country, he benefited Church and
State in America. The descendants of the colonists of 1848
and subsequent years now constitute in the American Cathol-
icism of several States a numerically strong and a valuable
element. Second to the people of none other blood in faith-
fulness to the Church, in thriftiness and industriousness, and
all the civic virtues, they have proven worthy sons and daugh-
ters of the pioneers who, in Father Van den Broek's day,
hewed homes and farms out of the Wisconsin wildwood, and
always rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and
unto God the things that are God's.
A constitution of exceptional ruggedness supported Father
1921.] FATHER VAN DEN BROEK 333
Van den Broek through the years of his missionary toil. But
at last the rigor of winter nights in the open, chilling rains,
physical privations and excessive exertion, brought low the
body wherein dwelt an heroic spirit. Stricken with illness on
All Saints' Day, 1851, while preaching to his people on the
glory and bliss of God's elect, the soldier of the Gross, on
November 5th of that year, answered the summons of his
Commander-in-Chief.
Father Van den Broek was buried in the little cemetery
beside the old church in Little Chute, laid to rest among his
Indians and such of the colonists as had preceded him in
death. In 1894 the missionary's bones were transferred to a
crypt beneath the parish church. Above, in the sanctuary, is
a statuary group, the Blessed Virgin, St. Dominic and St.
Teresa, with this inscription:
To the memory of Rev. Theo. Van den Broek, of the
Order of St. Dominic, our first and good Father. Little
Chute, 1833-1851. His grateful children.
:.:,: - -
The memory of this missionary, civilizer and colonizer
lies like a benediction on the village of Little Chute. In the
parish school white-robed Sisters of St. Dominic tell each
succeeding generation of boys and girls the story of the good
and great man who made this a village of Christian Indians,
who brought their fathers to this new home, and died at last
like a lamp that had burned itself out in the service of God.
THE SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BY JOSEPH J. REILLY, PH.D.
HE shillalah is no ignoble weapon. It has its
place in the international arsenal with the cestus
of the Roman, the Toledo blade of the Spaniard,
the scimitar of the Janizary, the lance of the
Bayards, and the quarter-staff of the Robin
Hoods. It has, like all these, done valorous service in the in-
terest of the public weal and the settlement of personal dis-
agreements. In some respects it is the most convenient of
martial engines, for it may be carried with the peaceful intent
of an olive branch, and at a moment's notice become the guar-
antee of one's own safety and the destroyer of any thought of
conquest on the part of another. The Roman who swaggered
along the Via Sacra with a cestus bound to his fist, the Don
in the folds of whose sash glittered the jeweled handle of a
dagger, the vagrant bridegroom of Bellona who cantered
across the countryside, lance on thigh, each cast a soft im-
peachment into the teeth of his neighbor's good intentions,
and had only himself to blame if his tacit challenge lured
some chance stroller to fling the gage of battle at his feet.
The shillalah has less bellicose associations. It is a device
of nature, not man, its purpose varying like her moods, and
its congeniality, both as a comrade in peace and as an ally in
private war, being the hallmark of her favorite children.
Robin Hood, singing a blithe May carol as he sought his tryst-
ing place in Sherwood with Maid Marian, his quarter-staff
under his arm, scarce stripped of yesterday's blossoms, gave
offence to no man. Like Orlando, perhaps, he had carved upon
it the name of her whose stature was just as high as his
heart and thus dedicated it primarily to love, and only in the
face of stern necessity, to battle. So, too, Shaun O'Kelley as
he saunters jauntily down the road to Donnybrook, the praises
of his colleen on his lips and his shillalah in his hand, incites
none to a breach of the peace; for his stout blackthorn, until
the need arises, is but a badge of gentility, and like a marshal's
baton, proves that upon less ornate occasions its prowess has
been tried and not found wanting.
1921.] SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 335
But I would not be understood as robbing the shillalah of
its proper celebrity. Truth to tell, its fame is due to its ef-
ficiency as the handmaid of war, as well as of peace, of com-
bat no less than of social adornment. It has, indeed, an
honorable lineage as arbiter of misunderstandings between
gentlemen to whose mutual belief juridical determination
offers less allurement in prospect, and less solace in retro-
spect. Its ajudication is swift, artistic, and final, and it leaves
no problems for a supreme council to compromise.
Beyond all other devices for pacific and bellicose employ-
ment, the shillalah is suited to subserve the ends of outraged
justice in the private quarrels of the great. Indeed, its family
tree endows it with something of that divinity which doth
hedge a king, and thus it befits no menial hand, no petty
cause, no unseemly occasion. Transcending ethnic and pa-
rochial bondage, it admits no limitations of time or space.
The amenities of peace and the triumphs of battle are alike
its debtors. Upon its parent stem, be it remembered, Richard
of Gloucester, a very king despite his crooked back, hung his
crown at Bosworth Field in proof that, even with the Sassen-
ach, the shillalah should displace the sword. They that sit
in the seats of the mighty have forgotten that prophecy, but
the dwellers upon Parnassus have remembered it. In proof of
which, the Parnassians themselves shall answer.
One of the earliest essays of the shillalah occurred when
the brilliant profligate, Greene, attacked the greatest of Eliza-
bethans in a fashion quaint, but vigorous: "There is an up-
start crow, beautified by our feathers, that with his Tygers
heart wrapt in a Pleyers hide, supposes he is as well able to
bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you, and being an
absolute lobannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely
Shakescene in a countrie." This quaint bludgeoning had no
effect upon the assailed, who doubtless smiled at the vehe-
mence of the attack and went serenely on his way, producing
with incomparable genius such masterpieces as Hamlet, Mac-
beth, and Winter's Tale. Verily, Greene's blows fell upon thin
air, and his name has survived merely as that of a minor con-
stellation dimmed by the blazing star of Shakespeare.
John Dryden was the first wielder of the shillalah in Eng-
lish literature who knew its possibilities, and employed it
with consummate skill. Like every great man, he had the
336 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
gentle art of making enemies who found him, to their sor-
row, pugnaciously unwilling to make a Roman holiday for
their diversion. In MacFlecknoe, he administered a broken
pate to the ponderous and indecent Shadwell, who had at-
tacked him vi et armis and deluged him with scurrilous abuse.
It was, however, on a later occasion that he proved himself a
very master of the shillalah. The Duke of Buckingham, son
of the celebrated favorite of James I., had burlesqued Dry-
den's tumid tragedies in The Rehearsal, only to be repaid with
interest when, November, 1681, honest John cudgeled him
with merciless skill as "Zimbri" in Absalom and Architophel.
This famous satire, beneath the veil of a Hebrew disguise,
recounted the story of the critical state of English affairs at
the time, when treachery in high place stalked abroad, naked
and unashamed. A master of intrigants was Buckingham,
witty, rich, handsome as a Greek god, a Lovelace whose amour
with the Countess of Shrewsbury was notorious, and whose
vanity and restless desire for power were the inspiration of
his political activities. Vulnerable as he was, the adroit pol-
itician writhed beneath the telling blows of his assailant. The
court, says Dryden, is overrun with faithless nobles:
In the first rank of these did Zimbri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over violent or over civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself to Court; then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief:
1921.] SH1LLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 337
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.
Dry den's prowess with the shillalah was unfailing; every
stroke was delivered with vigor and told heavily. Pope was
less vigorous, but more diabolically clever, and a thin crimson
line followed every blow. Not that he could not strike with
deadly effect when he wished; his onslaughts in the Dunciad
are ghastly. But it is in his attack on his erstwhile friend,
Addison, that his skill reaches the heights of consummate ar-
tistry. Pope had broken into the world of letters in London
in the face of enormous handicaps. Denied a university edu-
cation on account of his religion, short of stature, and so thin
as to be grotesque, he was cursed with a suspicious temper and
a morbid sensitiveness which was constantly being wounded.
Though vulnerable in a hundred ways, he was never attacked
with impunity and whatever blows he received, were returned
with a swift and deadly malevolence which made his victim
reel.
Pope found Addison the centre of an admiring coterie
who gathered about him nightly at Will's Coffee House and
drank in his words as the utterances of an oracle. In many
ways, Addison was the darling of fortune. The Campaign,
with a telling simile, and Cato, with two striking lines, had
won him fame and political preferment while his contribu-
tions to The Spectator had had the less substantial, but more
enduring, effect of securing his literary reputation for all time.
Austere of manner, coldly gracious, consciously superior, the
clever Mr. Addison, favorite of the great Whig Lords, occu-
pant of high political place, breathed with serene complacency
the incense-laden air of Will's.
At first Pope formed one of the worshippers, but he had
ambitions of his own. Incense when smoking upon another's
altar was an offence to his nostrils, and his morbidly suspicious
nature conspired with his jealousy to persuade him that Addi-
son had tried to thwart his literary ambitions. For long, and
in secret, Pope nursed his wrath and, at last, four years after
Addison's death, he took his revenge, attacking the "Spectator"
under the name of "Atticus" in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
For Pope to show no scruples in leveling an attack upon an
adversary already in his grave was typical; the magnanimities
VOL. CXIII. 22
338 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
of the great Dryden lay beyond his comprehension. At first,
he takes a fling at poetasters, and then continues:
Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blessed with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
- While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he!
The Great Cham of later eighteenth century literature,
Samuel Johnson, was as conspicuous among the literati of his
day as was Addison in his; but there was one noteworthy dif-
ference: Addison had no peer in his coterie, while Johnson's
circle included such celebrated names as Reynolds, Goldsmith,
and Burke. Addison was dominant because he alone was a
literary star of the first magnitude; Johnson was dominant
because the sheer force of his personality compelled submis-
sion. Thanks to the hero-worshipper, Boswell, the Great
Cham can never die. His huge bulk, his poor vision, his
scrofula, his hypochondria, his puffings and groanings and
gormandizing are familiar even to Macaulay's schoolboy. He
had fought his way up from the darkness and starvation of
Grub Street along no such primrose path as had opened to the
serene Addison, and, like all men of his type, he held fragrant
the remembrance of the success which had crowned his un-
aided efforts.
1921.] SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 339
In the dark hours before fortune had smiled upon him,
Johnson looked about desperately for a Maecenas whose sym-
pathy and open purse might smooth the via crucis which
eighteenth century men of letters were forced to tread. He
hit upon Lord Chesterfield, the arbiter elegantise of his time,
polished, scholarly, and rich. To him, in high hope, Johnson
dedicated the "Plan" of his monumental Dictionary, only to
receive in acknowledgment a scant donation and prompt for-
getfulness. Disgusted at such pusillanimity, but undaunted,
Johnson slaved at his task for seven long years, and by April,
1755, the great Dictionary was ready to be issued. It was then
that Chesterfield awoke. He had been remiss. But now he
became suddenly alive to the greatness of the uncouth hypo-
chondriac whom he had permitted to cool his heels in his
ante-chamber, and had supposed long since engulfed in the
limbo of literary hacks. He hastened to bestir himself, hoping
to make amends for his neglect and to secure the dedication
of the Dictionary at the cheap price of an eleventh hour
notice in its favor. The unctuous praises of the noble lord did
not deceive Johnson and, in hot indignation, he wrote his
celebrated letter to his recreant patron which proved him a
worthy wielder of the shillalah:
"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in
your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during
which time I have been pushing on my work through diffi-
culties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it,
at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assist-
ance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor.
Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern
on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has
reached the ground, encumbers him with help? The notice
which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been
early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indif-
ferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot
impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no
very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations when no
benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron which Provi-
dence has enabled me to do for myself.
340 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
"I have long been wakened from that dream of hope in
which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my lord,
"Your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
"SAMUEL JOHNSON."
Johnson did more than rebuke the everlasting vices of
selfishness and vanity: he proclaimed for literature, in clarion
tones, its Declaration of Independence.
One does not think of Johnson's friend the genial Oliver
Goldsmith as a wielder of the shillalah. He was too warm of
heart, too boyishly indifferent to the sterner things of life, too
far immune to the fires of indignation to have recourse to the
bludgeon. On a certain occasion, however, he essayed it and,
although the blows he delivered were love pats and his shil-
lalah as it were twined with spring blossoms, he proved him-
self a manipulator of high skill. One evening at St. James'
Coffee House, the company hit upon the diversion of taking off
in verse Goldsmith's peculiar oddities, an amusement which
gave as ample pro6f of his good nature as of their cleverness.
Garrick's mock epitaph has endured:
Here lies Nolly Goldsmith,
For shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel,
But talked like Poor Poll.
In Retaliation, the Doctor's weapon struck the conceited
little Davie a telling blow:
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.
Goldsmith's most skillful stroke*, however, were aimed at
his countryman, the orator, Burke:
Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind;
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining;
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit,
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit;
. For a patriot too cool; for a drudge disobedient;
And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.
1921.] SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 341
The most famous onslaught with the shillalah in the first
half of the nineteenth century was Byron's in English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers. The poet was young, just of age, in
fact, and his first publication, painfully jejune, had received
no delicate treatment from the critics of the Edinburgh Review.
Byron was hurt, indeed furious, as was natural for a youth
who was passionate, impulsive, and vain, and who looked with
challenging eyes upon those Parnassians, in whose midst he
had been denied a seat at his first essay. Seizing his shillalah,
he laid about him lustily, cudgeling whatever head he saw
with indiscriminate vigor, as if he regarded all the world, not
as his oyster, but as his enemy. So promiscuous was the lad's
shillalah debauch that throughout the rest of his life he found
himself either continuing quarrels which he had gratuitously
begun, or offering apologies to men whose crowns he had
sought to crack. Scott, Moore (both to become his warm
friends afterwards), Wordsworth, Southey (then and ever
after Byron's pet abomination), Coleridge, Campbell all were
vigorously cudgeled. Scott "foists on the public taste his stale
romance;" Wordsworth, who in later years was more than
once to shake his garlanded locks over the author of Don
Juan and Cam, is dubbed an idiot, who
Both by precept and example shows,
That prose is verse, and verse is only prose.
Coleridge is an infant "to turgid ode and tumid stanza dear,"
and the critic, Jeffrey, is condemned to be hanged in the next
world, if not in this one.
Personal bitterness made Byron's attacks more vigorous
than skillful. Compared with Dryden and Pope, he was but
a tyro with the shillalah, and if he cracked an occasional head,
it was only after many savage blows had either fallen on thin
air or struck home upon the innocent bystanders.
For sheer forceful bludgeoning in which the victim is
dressed down from head to toe, one can find few instances
in English literature to compare with Hazlitt's celebrated letter
to Gifford. As editor of the Quarterly Review, Gifford had,
on various occasions, attacked the high-strung essayist bru-
tally. If Gifford imagined that by accusing Hazlitt of inabil-
ity to write English, by sneering at his point of view, and by
ridiculing his notorious likes and dislikes he could with im-
342 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
punity make insult a substitute for criticism he was sadly in
error. For when Hazlitt struck back, it was with a vigor un-
equaled in his generation, and the torrent of blows which he
rained down upon his victim would have shattered any man
with a thinner pate than the Boeotian editor of the Quarterly.
"Sir, you have an ugly trick," began the enraaed Hazlitt,
"of saying what is not true of anyone you do not like; and it
will be the object of this letter to cure you of it.
"You are a little person, but a considerable cat's-paw;
and so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection
with persons high in office constantly influences your opinions,
and alone gives importance to them. You are the Government
Critic, a character nicely differing from that of a Government
spy the invisible link that connects literature with the police.
It is your business to keep a strict eye over all writers who
differ in opinion with His Majesty's Ministers, and to measure
their talents and attainments by the standard of their servility
and meanness.
"There is something in your nature and habits that fits
you for the situation into which your good fortune has thrown
you. In the first place, you are in no danger of exciting the
jealousy of your patrons by a mortifying display of extra-
ordinary talents, while your sordid devotion to their will and
to your own interest at once ensures their gratitude and con-
tempt.
"Raised from the low ^st rank to your present despicable
eminence in the world of letters, you are indignant that any-
one should attempt to rise into notice, except by the same
regular trammels and servile gradations, or should go about
to separate the stamp of merit from the badge of sycophancy.
"From the difficulty you yourself have in constructing a
sentence of common grammar, and your frequent failures,
you instinctively presume that no author who comes under the
lash of your pen can understand his mother-tongue: and
again, you suspect everyone who is not your 'very good
friend' of knowing nothing of the Greek or Latin, because you
are surprised to think how you came by your own knowledge
of them.
"Such, Sir, is the picture of which you have sat for the
outline: all that remains is to fill up the little, mean, crooked,
dirty details. The task is to me no very pleasant one; for I
1921.] SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 343
can feel very little ambition to follow you through your ordi-
nary routine of pettifogging objections and barefaced asser-
tions, the only difficulty of making which is to throw aside all
regard to truth and decency, and the only difficulty in answer-
ing them is to overcome one's contempt for the writer. But
you are a nuisance, and should be abated."
To find the high-strung Hazlitt dressing down his enemy
with such stinging blows is not surprising when one recalls
the limitations of the whilom shoemaker turned critic, whose
arrogant brutalities had broken the heart of Keats.
It remained for a man of noteworthy restraint to punish an
unprovoked assault in such swift and masterly fashion as to
prove him the peer of Pope. After anguished years of doubt
and searching of soul, Cardinal Newman had made his great
renunciation in the sacred name of Truth. Statesmen in Par-
liament deplored his defection; cries of "traitor" and "Jesuit"
and "moral coward" arose from many sides; England, in a
word, stood aghast. Through the storm of misunderstanding and
abuse, the supersensitive Newman preserved an outward calm
though his heart was bleeding, and for twenty years the oblo-
quy of an act which Englishmen could not or would not
understand pursued him like the Nemesis of an unforgivable
iniquity. At last the smoldering fires of mistrust burst into
flame. Charles Kingsley, Canon of the Established Church,
published in Macmillan's Magazine for January, 1864, a review
of Fronde's History of England, in the course of which he
wrote : "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with
the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need
not, and on the whole ought not to be." In a word, Newman
was an advocate of falsehood a charge so shamefully mis-
placed that even Anthony Froude laughed at it.
Newman wrote the editor of Macmillan's, demanding an
apology on the ground that the statement attributed to him
was untrue. This letter was referred to Kingsley, who cited in
support a sermon which Newman had preached while still
an adherent of the Church of England. A brisk exchange of
letters followed and, finally, accused in his turn both of mis-
representing Newman the Protestant, as well as of traducing
Newman the Catholic, Kingsley deigned to assure Newman
that if he "did not mean what he said" in the sermon under
discussion, his accuser would "take his word for it." It was
344 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
then that Newman, stung into indignation, published his cele-
brated resume of the entire affair, unequaled of its kind in
English literature:
"Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming: '0 the chi-
canery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the conscience-
killing tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for an
evidence of it! There's Father Newman, to wit: one living
specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a Priest, writing
of Priests, tells us that lying is never any harm.'
"I interpose: 'You are taking a most extraordinary liberty
with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where.'
"Mr. Kingsley replies: 'You said it, Reverend Sir, in a
sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar of
St. Mary's, and published in 1844; and I could read you a very
salutary lecture on the effects which that Sermon had at the
time on my own opinion of you.'
"I make answer: 'Oh . . . Not, it seems, as a priest speak-
ing of priests; but let us have the passage.'
"Mr. Kingsley relaxes: 'Do you know I like your tone.
From your tone, I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe
that you did not mean what you said.'
"I rejoin: 'Mean it! I maintain I never said it, whether as
a Protestant or as a Catholic.'
"Mr. Kingsley replies: 'I waive that point.'
"I object: 'Is it possible? What? waive the main ques-
tion ! I either said it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous
charge against me; direct, distinct, public. You are bound
to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly; or to own
you can't!'
" 'Well,' says Mr. Kingsley, 'if you are quite sure you did
not say it, I'll take your word for it; I really will.'
"My word! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was
my word that happened to be on trial. The word of a Profes-
sor of lying, that he does not lie!
"But Mr. Kingsley reassures me: 'We are both gentlemen,'
he says: 'I have done as much as one English gentleman can
expect from another.'
"I begin to see: he thought me a gentleman at the very
time that he said I taught lying on system. After all, it is not
I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what he said.
'Habemus confitentem reum.' So we have confessedly come
1921.] SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 345
round to this, preaching without practising; the common
theme of satirists from Juvenal to Walter Scott!"
Poor Kingsley ! Muscular, but blundering, he was helpless
before this frail recluse of sixty-three, whose uncanny skill
with the shillalah might challenge the rapier of a D'Artagnan.
Unwittingly, Canon Kingsley did the world a service. For to
his attack we owe that masterpiece of self-revelation, written
in anguish and tears, the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, the second
greatest autobiography in the world.
In after years, Newman regretted the deadliness of his
rejoinder, withdrew the story of the famous duel from subse-
quent editions of the Apologia and, with a touching generosity,
prayed for the repose of Kingsley's soul.
Perhaps the most celebrated instance of the shillalah in
literature within the memory of living men was Stevenson's
attack on the Rev. C. M. Hyde. All the world had felt its
heart stirred when Father Damien renounced the paths of
peace, and in the heyday of his young manhood consecrated
his life to the living dead who dwelt in the charnel house of
Molokai. The years passed, the inevitable occurred, and when
Father Damien was gathered to his fathers, it was as a victim
of the most ghastly of diseases. The grave had scarcely closed
over him when Rev. Mr. Hyde of Honolulu, in an evil hour,
wrote a letter to the Rev. H. B. Gage in which he said cruel
things about the Belgian martyr. "He was a coarse, dirty man,
headstrong and bigoted," and, alas, he added another and
vastly more brutal charge. The letter of Dr. Hyde found its
way into print and aroused the passionate resentment of a man
who, like Damien, was doomed to an early death, and whose
life, like the Belgian's, was a romance of heroic optimism.
Essaying the cudgel in defence of Damien's memory, Robert
Louis Stevenson assured a shameful immortality to the name
of Hyde. "If," he wrote in his open letter, "if the world at all
remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be
named Saint, it will be in virtue of one work : your letter to
the Rev. H. B. Gage." The opportunity to make a sublime
sacrifice for the wretched denizens of Molokai God sent to
Hyde no less than to Damien. But Hyde sat "and grew bulky
amid enviable opulence" in a house which "could raise, and
that very justly, the envy and the comments of passers-by,"
while "a plain, uncouth peasant stepped into the battle, under
346 SHILLALAH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE [June,
the eyes of God, and succored the afflicted, and consoled the
dying, and was himself afflicted in his turn, and died upon the
field of honor." Even though Damien had faltered and fallen,
decency should have sealed his accuser's lips. "Your Church
and Damien's were in Hawaii in a rivalry to do well: to help,
to edify, to set divine examples. You having (in one huge in-
stance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not
have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence; that
when you had been outstripped in that high rivalry, and sat
inglorious in the midst of your wellbeing, in your pleasant-
room and Damien crowned with glories and honors, toiled
and rotted in that pigstye of his under the cliffs of Kalawao
you, the elect, who would not, were the last man on earth to
collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would
and did."
Stevenson crushed the Rev. Mr. Hyde and vindicated
Father Damien's memory. But he did more; he won a victory
in the cause of those eternal decencies in which he believed
and for which the children of light shall never cease to be
called upon to do battle.
Verily the shillalah is no ignoble weapon. That truth is
worthy of repetition. They that sit in the seats of the scornful,
have more than once bowed their heads before it when their
indignant fellows, whose rights they have invaded, have in-
voked its aid. The task of settling private disagreements and
of compelling the retraction of slander, may some fine day be
referred to a board of conciliation and arbitration; the very
wards of each city may have a league to enforce peace. But
even when that happy hour arrives, the shillalah will, I fancy,
continue to constitute a board of appeal in literary disputes,
ready to hand, untrammeled by formula or technicality, its
ways swift and its adjudication sure.
MOLOKAI.
BY JOHN H. LOWDEN POTTS.
OH, far-famed islet of the summer sea,
Dread Molokai!
The giddy world dares scarcely glance at thee,
But hurries by.
I, too, when passing where thy mountains slope,
Could not espy
Or man or beast, or sign of life or hope,
Grim Molokai!
Lingers the leper still, among thy dells?
Does Damien sigh?
Is there no mark in thy domain that tells
No marble high
Of how a hero once thy valleys trod,
Like Christ to die,
A victim on thine altar, to his God?
Oh, Molokai !
They tell me, "y es the leper lingers still:"
Still lives to die,
A type incarnate of a greater ill,
In valleys nigh.
How barren, bleak, with glooming clouds opprest,
Thy reaches lie;
Thou image of a sin-beladen breast,
Sad Molokai!
But no! Thou'rt not the fearsome thing men deem,
Our Molokai !
Soft breezes fan thy every vale and stream :
Thy shadows fly,
Like sweet repentance, o'er thy gleaming miles;
A summer sky,
Like God's own benediction, on thee smiles,
Blest Molokai!
STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. MIHIEL.
BY JOHN J. FINN.
OOKING at a war map at midnight on September
11, 1918, one would have noticed an ugly bulge
in the line between Verdun and Pont-a-Mousson,
that pushed its way down as far as St. Mihiel.
For four years this salient had been pointing,
like a menacing finger, at the heart of France. But on Satur-
day, September 14th, the salient was no more. The American
doughboy had straightened it out. He was not quite sure just
how much he had accomplished, for I heard one express a
longing for a newspaper, so that he could "see what we done."
But he knew that he was winning; he saw that thousands of
"Jerries" had already been attached to the A. E. F. for
rations; and he felt that the last few days had brought him
considerably nearer to Hoboken.
The weather just before and during the beginning of the
drive was anything but pleasant. It rained every day for more
than a week. The men of the Fifth Division will not soon for-
get those long night marches through the rain and the mud and
the darkness from the Bayon area up into position in the line.
They had not the comfort even of the inevitable cigarette, for
all lights were taboo. There was talking and joking for the
first few hours after starting out, but then packs began to
weigh ever heavier upon aching backs, and thereafter there
was no sound save the dull plod, plod of thousands of heavy
boots upon the muddy road. Occasionally a whistle blew, and
we fell out of ranks and threw ourselves down by the roadside.
It was pleasant to hunch into a ditch, lay one's head back on
the grass, and feel the soft rain on one's face. But the ten-
minute rest passed all too quickly, and the command to "fall
in" soon started the column on its weary way once more.
We arrived one morning about dawn in the spacious
grounds about a large chateau, and I can well remember
Major Baldwin standing in the rain-soaked darkness beneath
a great tree and announcing very positively : "This is Battalion
Headquarters." The tree was not different from any other
1921.] STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. MIHIEL 349
until then; but from that moment it became the proud shel-
terer of important looking gentlemen in khaki and Sam
Browne belt, who hovered around it as Adam and Eve must
have hovered around the forbidden tree, except that, in this
instance, the hoverers were held by duty and not by desire.
Later, with a few others, I went looking for some kind of
shelter, and spying a dim light at one end of the chateau, we
made for it. A door was open, and we walked in. A French
Major, in full uniform, lay dead upon a couch banked with
flowers, while candles sputtered in the sockets of candelabra
at his head and feet. A boy of ten or twelve sat beside the
couch and turned to look at us for a moment; then leaned his
head back upon his hands. We learned later that the dead
officer was an aviator. A German plane had come over that
morning and a call had come for whoever was ready to go up.
The Major had risen to do battle, and while he brought down
the enemy plane, was himself mortally wounded. He was only
one of that daring band of air-fighters who counted the cost
cheap if, by sacrificing themselves, they might serve France.
We arrived at Jarville, on the outskirts of Nancy, about
midnight on Saturday. After saying Mass at seven the next
morning, in the beautiful Church of the Sacred Heart, for the
soldiers quartered nearby, I set out for Headquarters, which
had been set up in a deserted cafe. Here I learned that the
order had gone out that the men were to be "confined to bil-
lets;" but the Colonel agreed that if I gathered the men to-
gether, marched them in regular order to church and then
back again, they might go to Mass. So they were routed out of
houses and stores and stables, and about two hundred marched
over to High Mass in St. Louis' Church. I received the Cure's
permission to say a few words to the men in English, but I
had been speaking less than ten minutes when the celebrant
arose and started for the altar to intone the Credo. I do not
know if he was disgusted with my effort, or just hungry; per-
haps both. At any rate, I came to an abrupt close.
That afternoon we marched through Nancy, a city that
had been visited by German planes on nearly every clear
night for four years. Crowds lined the sidewalks and cheered
"les Americains" as we marched along, our hobnailed boots
rattling like machine guns on the cobblestones. The artillery
had preceded : guns, big and small, some drawn by two, others
350 STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. MIHIEL [June,
by eight horses, the men sitting on the gun carriages, with
their arms folded, as they do in the recruiting ads.
How the American First Army ever got into position to
open the attack on schedule time, will always be a mystery to
the uninitiate. The roads up about the Metz bridge were a sea
of mud and were choked with all manner of traffic : ammuni-
tion carts; supply wagons, trucks carrying artillery shells and
powder, couriers on horse and motorcycle, and the waddling,
ungainly tanks, the objects of interminable streams of male-
diction from the drivers of every other vehicle on the road.
Fifth Avenue never knew a traffic jam such as the Metz High-
way knew during the St. Mihiel operation. The M. P.'s did
their best to be efficient traffic cops, but, as usual, their efforts
were little appreciated and much derided.
Near the bridge, I noticed two officers sitting on a rock
that rose like an island out of a light brown sea. On closer
inspection they proved to be Father Ward Meehan and his
Colonel, though, what with beards of several days growth,
loss of sleep, long marches and intimate contact with affec-
tionate French mud, they little resembled the spick and span
officers of a few weeks previous. Near here, also, my orderly,
Con, and myself lay down in a dugout to snatch some rest. A
gun across the road fired over our heads at regular rapid
intervals; two blankets that had been borrowed from a Cap-
tain almost walked away with us, so alive were they with
cooties; and, before long, the rats came out to keep us com-
pany. I arose and went out, and when the gas alarm sounded
a little later, hurried back to find Con still snoring contentedly!
The small town of Regneville, directly in our path, had
been battered to dust during four years of conflict. There
was scarcely a stone left upon a stone. What had once been
a town was now a stretch of uneven heaps of rock and mortar,
pitted with shell holes. The bell from the village church had
been brought back and was being utilized as a gas alarm.
Despite great masses of barbed wire entanglements, traps and
mines, so swift and resistless was the advance of the infantry
that in places they crowded their own artillery barrage, and
some shots fell among them. A small French tank struck a
mine, and the driver, broken and bloody, lay among the
twisted iron of his ruined machine. Wagons were wrecked,
a bridge destroyed; gas masks, coats, helmets and various
1921.] STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. MIH1EL 351
other articles of equipment were scattered about; deep gashes
were torn in the ground; there were dead horses; and spat-
tered with mud and blood, there were gray-faced dead men.
I buried a German "unter oflizier" and read the prayers
over him while some of our boys looked, first surprised, then
provoked; but only for an instant. Then they doffed their
caps and stood quietly by. The German had been a sniper,
and it took a few moments before Christian charity triumphed
over natural resentment.
Upon the chaplain devolved the task of searching the
bodies of the dead, gathering together their personal belong-
ings, and seeing that they were forwarded to the department
that would, in time, return them to the dead soldiers' relatives.
I remember the difficulty I had trying to remove a ring from
the finger of one of our men. It was a gold ring with the
square and compass emblem of Masonry. With the aid of
some soap it finally slipped off, and I buried him with another
of our men, at the edge of a wood. A broken box furnished
some slats from which two crosses were made, and a Brigadier
General, who happened along, stood with uncovered head
during the brief prayers. He then loaned me his map while
I located the exact position of the graves, for the army was
properly particular about having the burial reports as de-
tailed and accurate as possible.
Up in the Bois Gerard we came upon a German hospital,
before which, in a cleared space, a large red cross, in a white
circle, had been formed of tiles taken from the roofs of French
cottages. It was evidently a plea to aviators to spare their
bombs, though a German plane and a German battery made
things very uncomfortable for a time while we buried about
thirty of our men alongside the hospital. Nearby was a
quarry where the enemy had abandoned a gun, taking care to
remove the sighting mechanism. This did not prevent several
of our men from using some of the piled-up ammunition, and
they had a wildly enjoyable time firing gas and shrapnel and
high explosives in the general direction of Germany.
After they had somewhat recovered from the bewildering
power and dash of the American attack, the Germans, strength-
ened by reinforcements, made spasmodic attempts, at different
points in the line, to counter-attack. They were shelling a road
quite severely on Saturday afternoon, when I noticed some of
352 STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. M1H1EL [June,
our men standing in the doorway of a dugout. I went down
and invited any Catholics among them to follow me and go
to confession. There was a wooden shack out under the trees
nearby, and into this I went, followed by a very young soldier,
who knelt down and began his confession. He was nearly
finished when a shell landed somewhere outside with a deafen-
ing report and he toppled over on his face. I thought he had
been hit, but it was only the concussion that had unbalanced
him. He came up with a dazed expression, and looked at me
as though he suspected that I had knocked him down. Being
assured to the contrary, he finished his confession and started
back. But he proved a poor apostle; for, no one else appear-
ing, I returned to the dugout to find my late penitent advising
his comrades to "stay where yez are." An officer turned to me
to remark that he was a Catholic; but he refused to go to
confession.
"I haven't been bothering much with church for the last
few years," he said in explanation, "and I've been having a
pretty wild time. I know I'll go back to that just as soon as I
get the chance. If I went to confession now, I'd feel like a
hypocrite."
I coaxed, I argued, I pleaded. It was useless. He would
not be moved in his determination. The case, of course, was
exceptional. I cite it only to show that, even facing death,
Gestas had his few followers, as Dismas had his many.
A German and a French plane turned and twisted, dove
and darted in the air above, the while they spat fire at each
other, until the Frenchman crashed to earth and the German
in time was brought down by rifle fire. The wounded were
coming in: some walking cases, anxious to be "fixed up and
get back to my outfit;" others, their hobnailed boots protrud-
ing prominently, being borne in on stretchers. Many of them
would be maimed for life. For them (strange paradox!), the
War was over, and yet the War would never end. It was dark
in that first-aid station, and the pocket-flash was a godsend
as we stumbled about among the patient sufferers. The doc-
tors worked unceasingly, and ambulances waited to carry the
bandaged men back to more pretentious hospitals in the rear.
Later, Con sent me some stragglers, and their confessions were
heard while we sat on a little hillock, in the darkness, at the
side of the road.
1921.] STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. M1HIEL 353
Sunday broke clear and warm, and Mass was in a small
hut. Only a handful attended, which was natural under the
circumstances. One or two received Holy Communion. The
Germans were sending over an odd shell now and then, in a
half-hearted sort of fashion, and an air fight was going on
nearby. Con told me after Mass that "we got the Jerry." (I
fear Con was more interested in catching a glimpse of the fight
than he was in the Mass.) A non-Catholic Lieutenant-Colonel
put his head in at the window and looked on for a while.
A few days later he stopped me on the road to remark that he
"liked to see that kind of thing going on." That evening, up
in the Bois de Bouveaux, Major Leonard's battalion was re-
lieved by the Second Battalion of the Sixtieth, under Major
Baldwin, as courteous a gentleman and gallant a soldier as
ever won the D. S. C. It was a pleasure to serve under men
like Colonel Hunt and Major Leonard of the Sixth and Major
Baldwin of the Sixtieth. They were always ready and willing
to cooperate in every way possible with their chaplains.
During the exchange of positions some men went to con-
fession behind a conveniently broad tree, and we then started
back in single file, through the woods. Occasionally, when a
plane above became inquisitive, one made oneself, as nearly
as possible, part of a tree trunk. With the coming of dark-
ness, the rearward march began, and, as we looked back,
green and red signal lights burned brightly and briefly above
the black trees, then flickered and died.
Towards six in the morning we came to some dugouts
near the scene of the first day's battle. We were all dirty and
itching and had long since ceased being fussy about sleeping
quarters; but these dugouts were dirt raised to the n th power,
and few chose their shelter in preference to the cleaner grass
and the cool fresh air outside. About ten I awoke. A blazing
sun was beating down and there was the jangle of tin cups
and plates as the men went looking for their "chow." A report
came in that some bodies had been overlooked in the hurry
of the advance, and we went out to comb the field. An up-
right iron rod from which a handkerchief or a flag fluttered,
or on which a helmet hung, gave us our clue; and here, in
scattered spots, we found our dead and buried them.
At dusk we prepared to start again. A goat had been
captured during the drive, and, as we set out, he was pulled
VOL. CXIII. 23
354 STRAY MEMORIES OF ST. MIHIEL [June,
and pushed along while his owner proudly proclaimed: "I've
got the Kaiser's goat." One would never know from the ac-
tions of the men on the march whether they were going to or
returning from battle; whether they had tasted defeat or vic-
tory. There was the usual talk back and forth, generally
pleasant, occasionally peevish, sometimes profane, oftentimes
witty. There was more wit and humor among a crowd of
doughboys than Joe Miller ever dreamed of. About midnight
packs began to weigh heavily and treasured German helmets,
rifles, and various bulky souvenirs were reluctantly thrown
away.
About 3 A. M. we entered the village of Domevre, where I
was billetted with the good Cure. After a rest and a general
cleaning up, I went out to look around. The village was small,
and nothing different from a hundred other French villages.
The men were gathered in groups talking over their expe-
riences. Many who went up with us were not there. Some
would return later from hospitals, only to meet their death in
the next big drive. But that is war; and soldiers must not
think too much about who have gone or who may be next to
go. So the band assembled in the little square before the old
gray church that evening, and when a crowd had gathered
around them, Sergeant Peterson lifted his baton and the con-
cert began. From the window of the Cure's humble home I
could look out upon it all; and it was pleasant to sit there,
smoking a pipe, and listening to the strains of the Missouri
Waltz floating over the quiet village.
MARTIAL: THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST.
BY HERBERT F. WRIGHT.
HOW me a poet, and I'll show you a writer of
epigrams, for, as Poe tells us in "The Mystery of
Marie Roget," "in ratiocination, not less than in
literature, it is the epigram which is the most
immediately and the most universally appre-
ciated." It is, in fact, one of the most universal of literary
forms. Lending itself, as it does, to the expression of almost
any feeling or thought, it has not failed to excite the attention
and interest of every poet or would-be poet throughout the
ages from the days of Martial to our own. It is to Martial,
indeed, that we owe the epigram as it is today, for it was under
his master touch that it rose to its highest perfection. Carp-
ing critics to the contrary notwithstanding, his work has ever
since been the model and type of the epigram in all the liter-
atures of the world, a model and type which have not been
surpassed in any literature. In English literature, the list of
his translators and imitators reads like a veritable litany of
poets. Herrick and Dryden, Pope and Burns, Jonson and
Prior, Landor and Coleridge, Hood and Saxe, and all the rest
of those stars in the firmament of poesy did not disdain to
adapt the verse of the genial Roman to their own purposes.
In fact, there is often the danger of describing as of
English 'origin lines which owe their inspiration, directly or
indirectly, to the Roman satirist. This is a testimony at once
to the literary genius of Martial and to the invariable charac-
teristics of the civilized world in all times and climes. Human
nature is everywhere the same, and always most strikingly
so where the conditions under which it exists are similar.
Satire and elegy, amour and sentiment, punning and senten-
tiousness are common to all mankind. This explains the uni-
versal appeal of such poets as Horace; this, too, explains why
the lines of Martial appeal as irresistibly to us as they did to
the Heywoods and Haryngtons of earner generations.
There are few subjects, however, on which wider diver-
gence of opinion exists than on that of the nature of an
356 THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST [June,
epigram, fn its original sense it was a mere inscription upon
some material object, such as a monument or vase. Hence its
frequent use in epitaphs even in our own day. In its de-
veloped sense, according to Lessing's definition, it is "a poem
in which, after the manner of a real inscription, our attention
and curiosity are excited toward some single object, and more
or less held in suspense, in order to be suddenly gratified," or,
to define an epigram by means of one:
The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
In an epigram never should fail;
The body should always be little and sweet,
And a sting should be left in its tail.
With regard to the subject-matter of an epigram, the
variety is really only circumscribed by the range of wit itself,
which, in its turn, is limited only by the range of our ideas.
All professions, all classes of people, all the foibles and faults
of humanity everything and everybody may be the objective
of the epigram's attack. For instance, take Sir John Haryng-
ton's famous lines on treason :
Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Or that well-known epigram on truth :
Truth, they say, lies in a well;
A paradox, forsooth!
For if it does, as people tell,
How can it then be truth?
This play upon words reminds one of Sir Henry Wotten's cele-
brated definition of an ambassador, as "an honest man sent to
lie abroad for the good of his country."
The lawyer receives his tribute from the epigrammatist in
an epitaph like this:
God works a wonder now and then
Here lies a lawyer, an honest man.
Or his grasping proclivities are suggested in such lines as :
The law decides questions of meum and tuum,
By kindly arranging to make the thing swim.
1921.] THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST 357
Coleridge pays his respects to a bad singer in the follow-
ing unmistakable terms:
Swans sing before they die : 'twere no bad thing
Did certain persons die before they sing.
And Pope discloses to us that a popular modern slang phrase
is at least two centuries old when he thus addresses a certain
foolish person :
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come:
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
In a similar vein are Burns' lines on a noted coxcomb:
Light lay the earth on Billy's breast,
His chicken heart so tender;
But build a castle on his head
His skull will prop it under.
Women, naturally, have been a favorite topic with the
epigrammatist. First of all there is that well-known slander-
ous poem about their faults:
We men have many faults;
Poor women have but two
There's nothing good they say,
There's nothing good they do.
And Herrick's lines on a painted gentlewoman:
Men say you're fair, and fair ye are, 'tis true;
But, hark ! we praise the painter now, not you.
Or take the oft-quoted lines of the Vermont lawyer and poet,
Saxe:
Men dying make their wills, but women do
Not do a thing so sad;
What need to make what all their lives
The gentle dames have had!
Or the epitaph which Dryden intended for his wife:
Here lies my wife! here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.
Or the clever play upon words in the following lines about a
gay widow:
358 THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST [June,
Her mourning is all make-believe;
'Tis plain there's nothing in it;
With weepers she has tipp'd her sleeve,
The while she's laughing in it.
Not all the epigrams about women, however, are so ungallant
as the foregoing.
The form and range of the epigram were settled by the
Hispano-Roman, Martial, with a decisiveness to which there Is
scarcely a parallel in all literature. For, with more than one
thousand five hundred epigrams to his credit, he has left his
impress upon this unique form of literary expression so firmly
that the passage of time, far from causing its obliteration, has
served but to enhance it. There are not wanting, however,
those who would impair his claim to fame by charging him,
and with some justice, with a servility and fawning adulation
of wealthy patrons, and an indecency which cannot be denied.
But if we remember the times in which he lived, namely, dur-
ing the reign of perhaps the worst of the many bad emperors
who ruled the world in the first century, we should not be
surprised at the frankness and brutality so offensive to modern
ears.
It is an interesting and remarkable fact that the chief
celebrities of Roman literature were born outside of the city
of Rome. Thus, Venusia claimed its Horace, Arpinum its
Cicero, Mantua its Virgil and Padua its Livy. M. Valerius
Martial was no exception. Like Lucan, the Senecas and Quin-
tilian, he was a Spaniard, having been born in the little town
of Bilbilis about the year 40 A. D. While still a youth, he de-
serted the rustic scenes of the land of his birth for the gay
and bubbling life of the great city, and for over three decades
lived there, enjoying the acquaintance of everyone worth
while and satirizing keenly the prevailing vices of the time.
His declining years, however, were spent in retirement in
Spain, whither he had returned about the year '98, not more
than six years before his death.
His sojourn at Rome naturally was the period of his great-
est literary activity. Subjects for epigrams were to be found
in the many-sided aspects of real life in the capital of the
world. And they did not find him wanting, for he had a re-
markable gift for seizing upon the ridiculous and piquant,
1921.] THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST 359
as well as upon the commonplace, the ugly and the obscene,
and combining them into a short poem with endless wit and
surprising turns of thought. The relationship existing between
the cliens and the patronus with its attending sportula ("hand-
out") was a fruitful source for his epigrammatic skill, but
more interesting to his age than to ours. The parasite, the
debauchee and the fortune-hunter appear unpleasantly often
in his epigrams, but the variety of subjects is so great that no
other writer gives us as complete a picture of the social man-
ners and the daily life of the Romans. And it is precisely on
the ground of his contact with the ordinary human beings of a
workaday world that his popularity has rested from his day
to ours.
Take, for instance, the idea of wealth and stinginess.
Martial antedates Carnegie by nineteen centuries in his enun-
ciation of the principle that it requires capital to produce
capital :
If poor thou art, then poor thou shalt remain;
For now the rich alone may wealth obtain.
And yet the wealthy man is always discontented in his greed
for gold :
Africanus has a thousand pounds,
Yet seeks a ton.
Fortune gives too much to many men,
Enough to none.
And often is wont to become stingy:
When I asked for twelve thousand,
A mere six did you send;
To obtain twelve, I'll ask that
You twenty-four lend.
Wealth, indeed, if possessed by the wife, may cause her hus-
band to be subject to her:
Why am I loath to wed a wealthy wife?
My wife's own wife is not the life for me.
Priscus, let man be richer than his spouse,
Else man and woman will not equals be.
And, if possessed by old men, produces a swarm of fortune-
hunters, who take little pains to conceal their real desires,
once they have been named heirs :
360 THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST [June,
He who gives gifts to you, Gaurus,
Rich as the years fastly fly,
If you are wise and sagacious,
Really says this to you: "Die."
Or again:
You give me nothing while alive, but say
You will give after you expire.
If you are wise and do not act the jay,
You know full well what I desire.
The millionaire octogenarian who is childless is addressed in
this wise :
You have coffers of gold,
But are childless and old;
Do you think that you have a true friend?
You had true friends, I'm sure,
When a young man and poor,
But the recent friend longs for your end.
Other characteristic classes of contemporary society re-
ceive their share of attention at the hands of Martial. To the
pretentious dandy he says:
You wish to play the dandy
Yet be thought great withal.
But he who is a dandy
Is mighty, mighty small.
While one who is a trifle extreme in his faults, but partial to
none of them, is addressed thus:
Who says that thou art vicious is a lying elf;
'Tis not a vicious man thou art, but Vice itself.
Then there is the neat characterization of the professional
diner-out :
Philo swears that he has never
Dined at home. And why? Whenever
No one asks him out to call
Philo does not dine at all.
And of the prying individual:
Tongilianus has a nose
A fact which everybody knows
But nothing else beyond a nose
Has he.
1921.] THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST 361
Liquor, that relic of bygone ages in the prehistoric past, forms
the subject of quite a few of Martial's epigrams. To mention
one or two, there are the pointed lines on the heavy drinker:
The man a blunder makes who thinks
Acerra smells of y ester wine;
The reason is: Acerra drinks
Until the morrow's sun doth shine!
As well as the lines on the drunkard's daughter:
I am not astonished at all at the fact
That Bassia drinks only water.
But I must say I do marvel much that this act
Is accomplished by Bassus' daughter.
Occasionally, the poet waxes philosophical, as when he
moralizes on genuine and counterfeit grief:
Sweet Gellia, for her sire's demise,
Sheds, when alone, no tear;
A mournful flood fills up her eyes,
If anyone is near.
He grieves not, Gellia, who for praise
A tearful stream lets flow;
He truly grieves, who turns his face
To mourn unseen his woe.
But as a rule he clings to the more commonplace and, there-
fore, the more interesting happenings in the world about him.
There is the case of the quack doctor who abandoned his pro-
fession for something easier:
Diaulus, erstwhile doctor,
Now undertaker staid,
'Tis true, has changed his title,
But he hasn't changed his trade.
Also the unskilled oculist who turned to boxing as more prof-
itable :
You are a boxer now, 'tis true,
Though erstwhile oculist;
But what your dullness used to do
You now do with your fist.
Picturesque, indeed, is the reference to the slow and careless
barber :
362 THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST [June,
While Eutrapelus, the barber,
Goes over Lupercus' face
And makes his cheeks smart and redden,
Lo! a new beard grows apace.
And to that Bluebeard of antiquity, the seven times widower:
The seventh wife now, Phileros,
Is "planted" in thy field.
The land of no one, Phileros,
Than thine makes greater yield.
This has its counterpart in the clever lines on the seven times
widow :
On the tombs of Chloe's husbands
(Seven in all had she)
BY HIS WIFE hath she engraven:
What could franker be?
Then comes the professional flirt, or lover, who sends his
billets-doux to every girl he meets, but without reciprocity:
I know not, Faustus, what you write
To maids galore. I do
Most surely know no maids endite
Epistles fond to you.
By way of contrast there is the paradoxical plea of a real lover
in love with a lady of contrasting moods:
Thou art crabbed, agreeable, pleasing and sour;
Neither with nor without thee can I live an hour.
Moods, however, do not enter into Martial's characteriza-
tion of the egotistical belle whose conceit may be somewhat
justified:
You are pretty, I know; and youthful, 'tis true;
And wealthy, for who can deny it?
But as long as self-praise has possession of you,
Neither wealth, beauty, youth will belie it.
Or the mendacious lady who has no just ground for her con-
ceit:
Thou sayest, Bassa, that thou art
A pretty maid, a girl apart.
But Bassa fair (?), as all men know,
Is wont to say what is not so. iiU
1921.] THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST 363
Nor do we have to do with anything but grim realities in the
lines on the lady whose speeding years have carried away her
luxuriant tresses:
If Lydia owned as many years
As hairs upon her head has she,
Then Lydia would, as it appears,
Be just a little babe of three.
Or those lines on the lady who used false hair, as well as false
teeth :
You use bought teeth, bought hair you use,
Yet unashamed withal.
What will you, if an eye you lose?
That can't be bought at all.
Wdmen are not alone, however, in this attempt to defeat the
ravages of time; there is the man who dyed his hair:
White is thy beard, but black thy hair!
Yet I can tell thee why:
The one is short and very spare,
The other keeps the dye!
The folly of cowardice:
Fannius took his life away
In order to escape the fray.
What folly this, I ask: to die
Forsooth, in order not to die.
The bore :
You ask me what return I gain
From my Nomentan lot?
From that small farm I this obtain :
Linus, I see thee not.
The unwelcome guest:
Thou wert always a guest at my villa at Tibur,
And now thou hast bought it of me :
I have sold thee a villa that was thine before, sir;
I have imposed upon thee.
And the sycophant:
Cinna, be not elated by
My salutation, "Master;"
I hail my servant thus when I
Would have him move the faster.
364 THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST [June,
It is quite natural that the great host of would-be poets,
who infested the capital of the world at that time, endeavor-
ing to read their verse to whomsoever they could prevail upon
to lend an attentive ear, should become the object of the satir-
ical weapons of the real poet. For instance:
In your preface a very bad hoarseness you plead;
Since the plea is a good one, sir, pray why proceed?
And again :
You read no verse, Mamercus,
Yet fain a bard would be;
Be what you will provided
You read no verse to me !
The real poet, too does not forget his parsimonious and "sp&ng-
ing" friend :
You importune me, Quintus,
To give my books to you.
I have none, but the bookman
May sell you one or two.
"I? Give good coin for trifles?
In my right senses buy
Your verse?" you say. "I shall not
So fatuous be." Nor II
Nor the lawyer who dares to find fault with his verse:
A lawyer bold
(So I've been told)
Reproves my epigrams of gold.
I know not who;
But if I knew,
O lying lawyer, woe to you!
While he censures his critics, he does not wish to die in order
to receive the praise he merits :
Thou dost admire the bards, 'tis said,
Only of ancient days;
Nor e'en on them, unless they're dead,
Dost thou bestow thy praise.
Do not, I beg, suppose that I,
To gain thy praise, would wish to die!
1921.] THE MODERN EPIGRAMMATIST 365
But he fears retribution at the hands of his fellow-poets :
Why send I not my hooks to thee?
Lest you send yours in turn to me.
It is not a fear, however, which is based on the acknowledg-
ment of anything inferior in his own productions:
Both reader and hearer my verses admire,
But a certain bard censures my books.
I care not a fig, for my feast I desire
Should please banquetters rather than cooks.
Herein Martial shows his true claim to greatness, his ap-
peal to the rank and file of the common every-day people.
That his aim to "please banquetters rather than cooks" has
been amply realized is evident from his great popularity with
the reading public even today, so that Lessing's encomium
seems to be fully justified. "Only a few," he tells us, "have
made so many epigrams as Martial, and no one has made,
among so many, so many good ones, and so many really ex-
cellent ones." But Martial has also pleased the "cooks," for in
the index of the works of any truly great poet in any land and
at any time from his age to ours will be found the entry,
"Epigrams from Martial."
THE SHADOW BEFORE.
BY MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.
I.
HE islands and shore of that part of Maryland
where the Potomac meets the Chesapeake, the
western shore, as it is called, was destined for a
greater commercial prosperity than that drowsy
do-littleness which is now the behavior of the
days there, both in summer and winter in among the farm
lands or along the miniature landings, "the one-horse-power
wharves," Jim Clancy calls them, of St. Mary's River or Inigo
Bay. The prospect of "peace and plenty," which the scene in
old times presented, made the Ark and Dove anchor here.
Old St. Mary's City, so small now that an aeroplane can
hardly detect it in the parterre of woods, opened a doorway
to economic and commercial opportunities; but a later board
of directors in the Colony ignored the doorway and gave to
Annapolis and Baltimore the privileges which, if nature had
her way, would have gone to the waterways and pleasant
fields of St. Mary's and its environs. In lieu of oversea argo-
sies upon the waters, straggling boats of fishermen go out
from Bacon's Wharf and George's Island, drift lazily about,
and return with oysters and crabs and terrapin. Some ven-
ture farther forth during the spring season for the long nets
on the Potomac; only some; for the farmlands keep most of
the men in the springtime serving the fields of wheat and
corn, and the smaller patches of tobacco.
If, however, the wheels of industry engage no ledgers
there, the book of story, of fact as well as of fiction, has gath-
ered many a pageful. Incidents, which on the day of their
happening may have been ordinary enough, are now viewed
through the haze of a summer afternoon, the story-tellers under
the shade of a widespread holly, or in a quiet cabin by the
huge log fire on a winter night, the stories taking the empha-
sis of gesture and color, as it were, from the odd shadows
cast by the fire upon the walls. There are pre-JRevolutionary
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 367
tales creeks and uplands the setting for gallant manoeuvres;
old Mattingly's Greek being best known, where a group of
young Irish boys swam from a British vessel one night and
made their way to General Washington in Virginia.
There are narratives, some legend, some history, of 1812;
the Raley manor still keeps the "spy-glass" which Admiral
Duncan from the British Fleet left on the Raley porch one day
after his dinner of Maryland ham. Phantom riders discerned
along the byroads in the twilight, galloped mysteriously into
the stories; and ghostlike objects were detected upon far
horizons when the moon flitted from behind a cloud, or upon
stormy nights, when a flash of lightning those terrific flashes
of lightning over that conflux of waters picked out, as if with
a shriek, a spectral sail hiding in an inlet.
Yet it is not entirely out of old fabric that these tales are
woven. The countryside, still aloof from the noises and lights
of busy marts, is prompt even in these days to continue the
literature which circulates under the holly shade in summer
or by the log fire in winter; it can create, give it but an inch of
an incident, a chapter which will take ten nights in the re-
telling. How easily a whole winter might be whiled away
if the good people knew what befell Jim Clancy that April
evening only five years ago. Ghost and man, shadow and
substance would so commingle that fact indeed would be
stranger than fiction. But Jim Clancy, "not much given to
romancin' anyway," did not gossip about the marvelous thing,
and what he did reveal to Father Gorman, as well as what
Father Gorman knew from another source, were all locked up
under "the seal of the confessional."
John Smith that is the only name you can call him, since
nobody knows or is likely to discover his real name surely
had no foreknowledge of the dark place which was marked
out for him under the waters of that stormy night. And
pretty Viola Raley, whose feet could move as lightly over the
hedges by the shore as on the dance floor in Chapel Hall,
arrived only in time to see the boat sink under a swoop of the
waves; and quick upon that she saw two porpoises, when a
flash of lightning marked out every inch of the creek, glide
down into the yeasty waters where the boat disappeared.
Jim Clancy, living now on his little farm among the Brimfield
hills, in Massachusetts, said to some of the neighbors one night
368 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
last week that "it would be as good as a bookful to him to be
able to spend a couple of days down the Potomac and do some
boatin' on Inigo's Bay." That is how he started to tell the
story to some old Yankee farmers who found it very hard to
understand; indeed, they had to ask him to explain what he
meant by "a twist to the matter which was hid under the seal
of confession."
II.
Jim Clancy, "goin' back to the spring when it happened,"
had lost his work in Baltimore when the Maryland Canning
Factory closed. He met an employment agent, who wanted
good stalwart men for the fishing season "down the Potomac."
Jim was a ready recruit; he "bound out for three months, no
pay to be received till the very last day and hour were done
to the minute." It was good pay seventy dollars a month,
besides the board and bedding, "and the bedding was board
as well," added Jim with a nod of his head. "There was no
chance to spend what you didn't get," said he, "and to stick
at it till the bitter end, hard as it might be, was the only sen-
sible thing to do. The prospect of a neat sum at the finish
was a fine horizon to be lookin' at durin' the bitter cold
nights."
The months passed by "not as quick as I'm tellin' ye now."
Easter Monday, when Jim was to receive his "hundred and
more" was only four days distant. But there was an account
of a far different order which he wanted to settle. "It had
been hard and steady work, day and night, toilin' with the
long nets, and pullin' the boats in and out. Sunday was like
every other day. I could not get away to church, and even if
I could find an excuse for an hour or two, the nearest church,
as I found out, was twenty-five miles awa^y, goin' by land, and
ten if ye went by the water. Anyway, here it was, Holy Week,
and I was determined that I'd get to Mass on Easter day.
"But Easter was no more to the boss than any other day,
no more was Good Friday; and I had my own doubts that I
could prevail on him to let me off the day or two. Mind ye, if
I quit of my own accord, I forfeited the pay, and that same
contract was down in stiff writin'. I could pretend to be
sick, ye might say, but I couldn't at all as I was the picture
of health. It took all the eloquence I could think of, and the
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 369
promise of an extra day overtime, to prevail on the man. He
consented, however; and he advanced a third of my pay to me.
That allowed me to buy a new suit of clothes to go among the
people who would be wearin' their fine Easter styles; and I
could also give a penny at the church, as a decent man ought
to."
Jim did not wear his new clothes when he started out
from the fishing shack. He folded them carefully and placed
them, the new linen and all, under cover at the stern of the
boat. He would have to row over the ten-mile route, around
by George's Island, into St. Mary's River and on to Priest's
Point. The church was a mile up the road from the landing;
and he would likely enough find a hayrick or a barn where
he might sleep that night, and then be up "bright and early
with the dancin' sun."
"It was a lucky thing for more than myself that I fixed
on the landing at Priest's Point." Jim had little pauses for
emphasis in his narrative. "For when I finally reached the
end of the long pier and was lookin' about up and down the
creek and weighin' whether I should go farther up to a point
near the church and then in over the level stretch of land,
seein' nobody at all as if they had all gone off to Washington
or Baltimore, then, I say, in the wonderin' what next to do,
it was just comin' on twilight, then and there right below
me in three feet of water lay the thing, the corpse of a man,
if you please, as clear, every bit of him and his clothes, as if
he were on the bottom of the rowboat. Immediately I was
for jumpin' down and then for yellin' to wake up the whole
country. But I neither jumped nor yelled knowin' that the
man must haven fallen there long hours before."
Jim Clancy, finding an excellent chance to insert a telling
pause in his narrative, used the interim to fill his pipe, and go
on for awhile, with shorter punctuations, as he puffed the long
draughts out into the circle before him.
"I was in no need to be excited. Why jump into the
water to bring up the body, when with my oar, I could move it
over to a shallow place and reach down and bring it up into
the boat. I put my oar down carefully, brought it as gently
as I could to the side of the corpse, thinkin' I could move it
without hurt to it. What a gasp I nearly choked with, when
I looked down and saw the oar stuck right through the body,
VOL. cxin. 24
370 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
and me feelin' nothing at all but the bottom of the creek. Out
I pulled the oar; not a rip or a tear was to be seen in the man's
clothes. What was it? For the life of me I was nearly beside
myself with the queer feelin'. Again with more care than a
mother could have fondlin' her sick child, I dipped the oar
into the calm waters. I fixed it at the head of the corpse, drew
it slowly along the soft bottom of the creek, and there again,
as sure as my eyes look at ye now, the oar went right through
the body, and not a ruffle was made in the arms and the chest
when I looked down again. Well, it took but a second; old
clothes and all, as I was I jumped into the water, shiverin'
I was, too, with the queer sensations. I tied the boat to a
hook, and stood right over the man. Takin' a deep breath,
I leaned down, put my hands carefully under the figure, and
pulled; but there was nothing but drippin' water down to the
very tips of my fingers. And all the time, as I saw when the
water settled again, there was the figure, as calm as in the
daylight. I could see every line of the face, every stripe of a
thread in his clothes. What had got into my eyes? Was it a
fever, after the long pull at the oars across from Piney Point?
I flung myself up to the landing, dragged my boat towards the
shore, fixin' it for the night; and takin' out my new clothes,
I started at once for the shelter of a barn a few rods away."
If Jim Clancy was "a tremor from head to foot," "inside
as well as out," after the spectral vision at the boat-landing,
he was more amazed a minute later. "A thud, as if my blood
would shoot my head off," was his introduction about the
other vision which met his eyes as he came around the barn
corner. For there, hiding in a deep angle made by a hayrick
and the barn, was the living replica of the figure which Jim
had labored over a few moments before. There was a look of
surprise in the stranger's sudden glance, "yes, something of a
touch of terror," Jim added. 'There was something wrong
with John Smith, as I will be callin' him. And I thought the
thing for me to do was to keep as watchful as I could. I asked
him if it would be all right for me to change my clothes right
there; for the owner of the barn might not want any stray
gentlemen, says I, makin' a drippin' dressin' room of it."
John Smith tried to be affable enough with his answer;
but Jim Clancy could see that the tone and the words were
fetched from afar.
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 371
III.
"You are on your way to the church, perhaps," said Jim;
"I'll be along the road with ye."
John Smith had no answer to that, but a quizzical look
out of the side of his eyes. He was not going towards the
church; that was the stiff response he finally uttered; and he
glanced out through the opening to see, as Jim Clancy thought,
if the coast were clear.
"There is something on this fellow's mind," thought
Clancy, as he wrung the water from his old clothes and ar-
ranged them on the side of the hayrick. When he was ready
to speak, and in a sense to act, he said: "But it would look
mighty queer for us to be hidin' here, if the priest or one of
his men came along."
There was something in the remark that made Smith a
trifle nervous. And it was the voice of one nettled he had
when he spoke. "Well, you can go ahead, if it please you."
"And leave you here?" asked Jim with a merry playful-
ness in his tone. "Where is the Maryland hospitality in that,
I'd like to know? Sure a mile of a road is only half a mile
when there's two goin' it and talkin' ahead pleasantly. Come
along, man, or we'll be taken for men without any manners, or
perhaps for worse than lazy tramps."
John Smith, more vexed at all this chatter, as Jim Clancy
could easily make out, thought it better, perhaps, to go along
with this annoying stranger. He said ("more like a grunt,"
said Jim), "Well, up the road, then."
"And the priest will be waitin' in the church," Jim's cheer-
ful voice began.
"That doesn't interest me," was the curt reply.
Jim, however, was ndt dismayed by the taciturnity of his
companion, or by the fact that the half mile of road seemed
like a mile. He had his own thoughts about John Smith.
Why had he been hiding in that secluded corner, as if waiting
for the darkness of night? And why had he finally yielded to
Jim's insistence and come out upon the road? Did he think
to evade the searching eyes of his interrogator, and escape the
inquisition of his tongue? For after the vision at the boat-
landing Jim felt bound to make John Smith reveal some sort
of explanation of the phenomenon.
372 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
He kept at his light bantering talk till they reached the
church yard. Old Father Gorman was reading his breviary
under the porch lamp.
"Here's a friend of mine, Father, wants to go to confes-
sion." It was a bold step for Jim to take, as he called out in
a calm voice to the priest.
Smith "looked daggers" at him ; and he made pretence for
a moment that he was going past the gateway.
"He's a bit bashful, Father," Jim called again, taking
Smith by the arm. "Men dare to enter where angels fear to go ;
is that it?" he said, smiling into the angry face of his com-
panion.
Again, if Jim's conjecture was right, Smith thought it
more prudent to enter the church and so shake off this annoy-
ing pest. Father Gorman bowed to the strangers, and pointed
to them the way to the confessional.
"I'll be waitin' out here awhile, if you please, Father,"
answered Jim. And, "it was a full half hour," before he heard
the footsteps of Smith coming down the aisle of the little
church. Jim was not curious to see what effect the long session
"in the box" might have on the bearing of his protege. He
had made his own "review of conscience," distracted, indeed,
by the programme of the last hour; and he moved quietly up
to the confessional, glancing back to see Smith go out the
doorway into the dark beyond the porch lamp. To say, or
even to imagine, that Jim Clancy might hope that Father Gor-
man would have any talk about Smith would be an insult to a
man "who knew his catechism, and knew also that you don't
go quizzin' a priest about anybody who has been to confes-
sion."
Jim had some questions to ask, however, when Father
Gorman was closing the church door. "Do you think that
barn down the creek would be lettin' me in for the night?"
"Why the barn, Mr. Clancy?" asked the priest.
"Because, as I told you a few minutes ago, I'm a stranger
in these parts, and it would make good people a bit uneasy
if a tramp like myself were to knock at their front door. And
then again, having slept these past months on any soft side of
a plank I could find over at the fishing place, I would be com-
fortable enough on a wisp of straw in the barn."
"But the good people, as you call them, and they are that
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 373
indeed," answered Father Gorman with a kindly smile, "would
not be comfortable, leaving a guest in such a condition. No,
no, my good man, they will insist on your taking the best
room, or maybe," the priest caught sight of two figures coming
in the gateway of the yard, "or anyway, the second best. Here
is the daughter of the house now, Viola Raley, and her fiance,
Jack Nugent, who is down for a holiday from Washington."
Father Gorman leaned forward to whisper into Jim's ear,
laughing as he did so, "Jack will, of course, be accorded the
best room."
"We have come to drive you home, Father," Viola began,
when salutations had been duly spoken. "There is a storm
gathering over in the west."
"Two or three hours away, even the prelude of the storm;"
with what a kindly voice Father Gorman answered. And then
he presented Mr. James Clancy, and with a friendly clasp of
his arm added: "I would like your father to put Mr. Clancy
under cover for the night. He came all the way from the fish-
ing grounds on the Potomac to make his Easter Duty."
Before Jim could offer any expostulations, he was aboard
the Raley car (or was it Jack Nugent's?) riding down the road
again to the priest's house near the boat-landing. And he was
not allowed to make apologies to the Raley family when he
entered their large hallway. In three minutes, despite his
solemn avowals that he had "supper enough in the little boat
that brought him over," he was obliged to take a bowl of sub-
stantial egg-nog and cakes "as delicious as corn-meal and good
cooking can produce in any part of the world, even in the
kitchen of a king."
An hour had to be whiled away with stories : Jim Clancy
told his share. And then he prevailed on the man of the
house to let him sleep, not in the upper room to which they
were showing him, but on a little sofa in the room by the kit-
chen. "I might be wakin' early in the mornin', I am so much
accustomed to that these past three months; and it would be
easy for me to step out without disturbin' the whole house,
and get a view of the pretty country when the Easter sun
conies dancin' up."
Jim had other reasons for wanting to be on the ground
floor. Notwithstanding the hospitality of the priest and the
Raley family, he had not "slipped out of his mind" the queer
374 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
vision in the water that evening. Healthy as he was in every
fibre of his being, afraid of no physical danger, and never
superstitious over so-called "signs and omens," he could not
refrain from allowing his thoughts to ponder upon "the more
than ordinary adventure that spectre in the water; and then
meetin' the man a moment later." Yes, he would stay awake
for awhile; "and as for sleep, if a bit of drowsiness came to
make him forget the events of the day well, Jim Clancy
would sleep with one eye open, one ear listenin' down by the
water, and one foot ready to leap at the first sound."
"There was no closin' an eye," he said, "when the full
hullabaloo of the storm came over the place." What crashing
of thunder, what flashes of lightning, "fit to wake up the dead
of a thousand years." Trees creaked under the driving wind
and rain; gateways and doors screeched; the hissing waves
sputtered their wrath back to the skies, or rushed towards the
land crunching their curses on the terrified sands; and more
terrible were "the little noises" as Jim called them the twit-
tering of frightened birds out in the hedges, and the patter of
feet in rooms above; and once, when a door opened, he heard
Mrs. Raley's prayer in the hallway, "May God protect anybody
upon the water tonight. Star of the Sea watch over them."
A crash of thunder, "as if the whole countryside were a
sheet of glass smashing into a million pieces," made Jim
Clancy leap from his couch and jump towards the door. In
the horrible silence that followed, he caught a shriek for
"help!" and, "like another projection in the eyes," he was
sure that he saw a man sink in the boiling waves near the
landing at Priest's Point. Certain of the vision, he flung open
the kitchen door, and calling, "There is a man overboard at the
priest's landing," he ran to the porch, in wild anxiety to find
the shortest route to the pier.
"Take the path along the bank," rang out the bright voice
of Viola Raley from a window; "I'm following with a lantern.
Jack will take the motor."
Flashes of lightning marked out the circuitous path for
Jim. Speeding along when the white ghostly light "made the
way look like a frightened snake sneaking into the bushes,"
and faltering when in the blackness he ran against a huge
bowlder or a mess of wires, Jim Clancy made every second tell
like a minute. Only once did he meet with "a loss that counted
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 375
in the valuable time." In one of his leaps over a black hedge,
he failed to see a gully ahead where the water was rushing
madly back to a land-locked pool. Down he went into the
rapid stream; "and three seconds later in a flare of lightning,
that fairy of a girl, Viola, was reaching down for my hand,
and showing me the bit of a path ahead."
Clancy waited for no investigations, when he reached the
boat-landing. Immediately, he dove into the seething waves,
at the very corner of the pier where he had looked upon the
strange vision in the early evening. Viola's voice was calling
for help, and her lantern was waving in circles above her
head. A thunder crash that racked the whole countryside was
for a moment the only response to her cries. And in the long
sheet of flame from the skies, she discerned a boat, about
fifteen yards away, twist and sink beneath the waters, and
two porpoises slip out of the churning waters, and after a
long-drawn sigh, slip back again in the wake of the boat.
Lights flickered in Father Gorman's house, and in the little
cottage to the left, where the colored servants, Bob Mason and
his wife, lived. Priest and servants were on the pier when
Jim Clancy was dragging the body of John Smith to the land-
end of the pier.
"He must have capsized out there," Viola was speaking
to Father Gorman; "and he became exhausted just as he was
at the landing. Mr. Clancy found him just a few feet from
the wharf."
After strenuous and careful applications of "first aid prin-
ciples and practice," John Smith was gradually revived, and
carried to Bob Mason's cottage. An admonition from Father
Gorman, though given directly to Bob and his wife, was in-
tended for all of the party. "Don't talk about this accident
to anybody. Let this poor man rest here undisturbed till he
is able to go away."
Jack Nugent reached the pier as the little group was
moving away. Viola and Jim Clancy were proceeding to-
wards the motor boat, when Father Gorman warned them in
a pleasant invitation, "to be wise and take a drink of some-
thing warm." He beckoned them towards his house. "It is
not twelve o'clock; we have an hour yet, and so you will not
break your fast for the morning. And moreover, I must send
a bit of the wine over to Bob's house for the invalid."
376 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
There was another "hot bowl" for the rescuing party when
it reached the Raley homestead. It tasted all the more deli-
cious, when the fragrant freshness from the sea and land
breathed into the house after the violent excitement of the
storm. The lingering patter of the rain from the trees sounded
like home-coming music; the lapping waters under the banks
seemed to be chuckling with delight; and far across the fields
the reveling notes of a mocking bird serenaded the refreshed
halls and aisles of the woods.
Jim Clancy, attired in "comfortable clothes of Mr. Raley
himself, and a light duster belongin' to Jack Nugent," was
assured by the good woman of the house that his own clothes
would be dry and nicely pressed in the morning. And before
midnight sounded from the old clock in the hallway, Jim paid
a tribute to the last draught of the egg-nog, "as a bowl worthy
of any meetin' of friends in any part of the world on a Christ-
mas Eve."
IV.
If there was the enheartening touch of Christmas Eve
on the night before, Easter had a jubilation all its own in the
early morning after. Jim Clancy was out by the hedges long
before the sun came over the Virginian hills to strew its
pathway of gold upon the Potomac and Inigo Bay. It was a
man's eyes that were looking at the scene, but they had a
child's delight, and they easily imagined that the sun was
dancing up the golden aisle of the waters. The white-winged
fisher-birds sped gracefullly about in their joyous commerce;
out of the hedges came the ceremonious chant of thrushes
and exultant responses of mocking birds; and the silver and
green of the flowering hedges and the long stretches of trees
"made a song as far as the ears could hear, and a picture as far
as the eyes could see; and there was an Alleluia in every
diamond of raindrops upon the distant bushes. The whole
countryside was a new sort of rainbow, fresh and rejoicin'
and enlargin' the world itself and the heart of man."
A long, joyous morning followed. Jim Clancy witnessed
what he termed a "fairyland" at the church the merry groups
of young and old, the mirthful voices of salutations, the
flower-like splendor of the girls in pretty costumes and the
reverential visitors in the adjacent graveyard "movin' along
with a solace that only the Easter message can give." And
1921.] THE SHADOW BEFORE 377
during the Mass and after the Paschal Communion, Jim found
even greater glories in all the landscape round about. Cour-
tesy bowed to him not only from the Raley group, but from
strangers whose homes were five miles away; yes, even the
lilac bush at the gateway seemed to whisper a blessing.
He found a little library store which Father Gorman kept
for the convenience of his flock; and Jim purchased a pretty
prayer-book and a pearl rosary for Viola. "And, as two is
company and three is a crowd," Jim was smiling at Jack
Nugent, after the merry breakfast in the Raley home, he set
out with a light heart for his boat at Priest's Point. He had
baled out the water, and was casting off, when a pistol shot
rang down the road, and whizzed by the pier. Jim looked up
and saw a man upon a galloping horse speed down the road,
waving his hands and shouting to him. Jim tied his boat
and went towards the excited visitor.
It was the County Sheriff, and he showed his revolver.
"What are you doing in these parts?" he shouted, clapping a
firm hand on Jim's shoulder.
"A quiet man's business," answered Jim with a fearless
smile.
"And you'll come with me till we find out more about
you." The boisterous Sheriff was preparing to take handcuffs
from a pocket.
"If it doesn't take long," was Jim's good-natured reply.
"But if it takes time, I'm afraid I can't oblige; for I have to be
over at the fish by early evening. Perhaps, you will come over
there and see if I'm the man you want."
That nettled the pompous officer, and he muttered some-
thing about "being impudent to the law."
"The law may be impudent itself," Jim answered, and he
might have said more; but at that very instant, Father Gor-
man, who had been sitting at his quiet breakfast table when
the pistol shot disturbed the calm morning air, was hurrying
down the lawn. His amazement did not make him omit a
courteous greeting to the Sheriff, as he asked, "What is the
mistake in this scene?"
The Sheriff was ten miles from courtesy in the tone with
which he gruffly replied: "The Mechanicsburg post office was
entered Friday night; six hundred dollars stolen; this fellow
here is suspicious looking and may give an account."
378 THE SHADOW BEFORE [June,
"Just a minute, just a minute," Father Gorman said
brightly. "Step up towards my house." And in two minutes
he was out upon the lawn again, and holding a packet towards
the Sheriff. "Count that," he said. "It has the six hundred
dollars you are hunting for. I was going to return it tomor-
row. You can make me out a note certifying that you received
it, and Mr. Clancy can be witness."
"And before I do so," the Sheriff had his head high in the
air, "may I ask who gave you this money, sir?"
The priest was a bit indignant at the question. "You
count the money, please, and sign me a receipt."
"But I insist on the question again, sir."
"And I insist that you . . . here, sign this paper." Father
Gorman's voice was raised to a higher pitch, as he set a foun-
tain pen in the officer's hand. "And I give you just so many
minutes to leave my property and take your impudent ques-
tions with you. Do you know the law of the land which re-
spects a professional secret?"
The Sheriff counted out the money, put his name to the
receipt, and then cast another enraged glance at Jim Clancy.
"I will answer for Mr. James Clancy;" the priest waved a
hand at the officer.
Jim, coming to this point in the story, began to fill his pipe
again, as he looked over the heads of the Brimfield group
which had been listening to him.
V.
"But ye haven't told us, no more than the Sheriff, where
the priest might a' got the money," remarked one of the old
anxious group.
"It wouldn't be my part to be guessin' at what is behind
the seal of the confessional."
But to that little assembly of New England Yankees, the
allusion to "the seal of the confessional" was as mystifying as
the answer to the original question about the money; and one
of the old men was candid enough to refer to "that other
conundrum."
"But I might suppose, let me say," Jim was drawing
slowly on his pipe, "that as none of ye know John Smith, let
me suppose that he had stolen the money from that post office,
and he was waiting for the darkness of the night to cross the
1921.] TO PAIN 379
Bay and make away into the country and, perhaps, up to
Washington. A watery grave would have been his but for the
warning shadow in the waters. And after what I saw in the
water, I suppose again that I was a bit curious, and probably I
perplexed him with my chatter, till finally I got him to go to
confession; and if he was the man who took that sum of
money, sure he had to give it back in the confessional, or as
soon after as he could."
That point settled, there was prospect of a dozen queries
about the explanation of the shadow in the water. But Jim,
"the old pipe bein' tired for the night," stood up to go home,
remarking "it would be a long puzzle to go guessin' about
that."
TO PAIN.
BY SISTER MARY BENVENUTA, O.P.
OF thee I sit unfriended, and unwise:
Come closer, pain, and hold my hands in thine;
And let my spirit drain the dreadful wine
That brims the sombre chalice of thine eyes,
And kiss those lips where secret sweetness lies,
Since once were laid thereto the lips divine.
Take then this all unworthy kiss of mine,
Nor heed the trembling hand, the tears that rise.
God was thy nursling, thine the anointed hands
That swathed Him straitly on the atoning Tree,
Unkindly cradle where He yielded limb
And life to thine embrace. His chrism bands
Be mine, and these thy lullabies to me
The neophyte's initiating hymn.
COVENTRY PATMORE: POINTS OF VIEW.
BY FREDERICK PAGE.
O WARDS the end of the present year, Coventry
Patmore will have been dead a quarter of a
century, and by what we hope may prove a for-
tunate coincidence, our professional critics will
have had offered to them more than one occasion
for taking stock of the growth of Patmore's literary reputa-
tion. Mr. Osbert Burdett has just published a book under
a title which implies a very great deal: The Idea of Coventry
Patmore, and his publishers, the Oxford University Press,
announce also a volume of Patmore's later prose writings,
which will supplement his own two little books of reprinted
critical and religious essays. Together with these, there is a
little brochure which, for the already-convinced, will be
scarcely less interesting and not without importance: a Cata-
logue of Coventry Patmore's library, issued by Mr. Everard
Meynell from his Serendipity Shop, the entries annotated in an
interesting and not seldom illuminating way, and the whole
prefaced with a little essay by Mrs. Meynell, which will cer-
tainly rank as a locus classicus of Patmore criticism.
The two books already published afford a pretext for
the present essay.
Coventry Patmore was a man singular enough to be mis-
understood, and (both from reticence and whim, or reticence
masquerading as whim) to desire to be misunderstood of the
many and not fully understood by any but the very few. He
has been called narrow, but he was many-sided enough to be
different things to different men. For himself he was, always,
in all his work, a student and a reporter of the mystics, and
a disciple and apostle of the great legislators in morals and
intellect (which includes aesthetics) ; and, incidentally, a poet
who sang what he had perceived to be fair "unfathomably
fair." For Mrs. Meynell (it will be perceived that I am offering
my reading not only of the poet, but of his readers), for Mrs.
Meynell he is a poet principally, in that he has uttered with
exquisite accuracy the human passions of tenderness and
1921.] COVENTRY PATMORE 381
terror, delight and grief. And, indeed, he was, potentially at
least, a great tragic poet. He anticipated Tess of the D'Urber-
villes in a Christian version, where the mother of "Amelia"
says, with strictly measured bitterness :
"Though, Sir, the word sounds hard,
God makes as if the least knew how to guard
The treasure He loves best, simplicity."
It is with Mrs. MeynelFs unfailing justice that she notes that
what is so much to her, counted for comparatively little with
the poet himself.
For Francis Thompson he was, together with all else that
he was, "that oceanic vast of intellect;" and so also for Mr.
Burdett: "The intellect of Coventry Patmore is the greatest
philosophic intellect that has expressed itself in English verse.
There is more pressure to the square inch in him than in
any other poet." In Patmore, Mr. Burdett finds precisely that
which Mr. Frederic Harrison sought, and sought in vain,
in Matthew Arnold: "a system of philosophy with principles
coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative." Mr.
Burdett's exposition is detailed.
For Mr. Edmund Gosse, Patmore is a picturesque figure,
a fascinating personality, and, incidentally, a writer of greater
distinction than used to be acknowledged.
For some he is a mystic such as those whom he studied;
for others a poet of exquisite nature-details; for yet others
a poet (indeed a poet) of vers de societe. And it must be said
at once that all these are right, complete only as they complete
each other. I have thought that a sufficiently accurate defini-
tion of Coventry Patmore (omitting only his idiosyncrasy)
would be, that he was a Catholic poet : a Catholic who was a
poet, in a degree beyond that of (say) Aubrey de Vere; a
poet who was a Catholic, in a sense beyond what Mr. Burdett
has any occasion to say; that is, not only a Thomist, but a
Franciscan spiritually, of course, and, as it happened, liter-
ally.
The special misunderstanding to which Patmore himself
invited his readers, was to consider him as an "ancient bard
of simple mind," simpler than Jane Austen, as simple as Trol-
lope. That was in "The Angel in the House." In a prose essay,
382 COVENTRY PATMORE [June,
he speaks of the author of "The Unknown Eros" as being "pin-
nacled dim in the intense inane." That is as it may be, but
when he has gone as far as he intends to go in speaking of the
intimacies of God and the Soul, his Psyche craves precisely
the bourgeoise lot that had been Emily Augusta Patmore's in
Camden Town in the 1840's and 50's :
I ask, for Day, the use which is the Wife's,
To bear, apart from thy delight and thee,
The fardel coarse of customary life's
Exceeding injucundity.
Mr. Burdett's is a masterly book, and none the less so that
it respects its own limits, and deals solely with the "idea" of
Coventry Patmore. This is as separable from the "poetry" as
drawing from color; and, again, as separable from Patmore's
religion as thought from life, or light from heat; and one who
loves Patmore is not too happy at the dissection. I propose,
therefore, to touch briefly on the poetry which Mr. Burdett has
so largely taken for granted, then upon the "idea" which he
has so ably expounded, and, lastly, upon the Catholicism
which is not in this book his subject.
It is not an arbitrary or capricious requirement that a poet
should deal largely with the visible world, both for its own
sake, and in metaphor and simile, and this, not only because,
as Patmore himself says, spiritual truth can only be repre-
sented and made credible in parable and metaphor; but for
these reasons also, that accurate observation of physical phe-
nomena is some guarantee of general truthfulness, that these
phenomena are at once the subject-matter of, and a check
upon, theory, and that an interest in them counterbalances our
excessive concern for our own selfish interests excessive and
selfish, however immaterial or spiritual they may be.
Patmore was a Wordsworthian poet, to an extent that
has never yet been said, and if his concern with sex is exag-
gerated and unbalanced (that is, disproportioned) , it is so in
his reader, not in himself.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each,
They lift their heavy eyes, and look,
And lo! what one sweet page can teach
They read with joy, then shut the book;
1921.] COVENTRY PATMORE 383
And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget, but, either way,
That, and the Child's unheeded Dream
Is all the light of all their day.
Patmore's meaning is in his every word, and his emphasis is
equally distributed. In these verses he is concerned not only
with the sacrament of marriage, but with the cult of childhood,
instituted by Our Lord, and promulgated by Vaughan and
Wordsworth; and Patmore's own new contribution is the last
thing to be perceived in the verses: a certain theory of the
revelatory character of Dreams reenforced throughout all his
poetry. A concordance to Patmore would be very revealing,
on this subject and many another. "It is easy to keep an
empty room tidy," as Father Tyrrell said in criticism of the
unreal simplifications of certain philosophers; but Patmore's
room is the Universe, and everything is in its place. Take an-
other instance of his balance. Here it is the outer world, as
well as the world of dreams, in counterpoise with love, and
only just out-balanced:
. . . What shook my spirit, as I woke,
Like the vibration of a bell
Of which I had not heard the stroke?
Was it some happy vision shut
From memory by the sun's fresh ray?
Was it that linnet's song; or but
A natural gratitude for day?
Or the mere joy the senses weave,
A wayward ecstasy of life?
The actual explanation, when at length it is given:
... I remembered, yester-eve
I won Honoria for my wife,
is likely, for the youthful or other rapid reader, to cancel the
suggested explanations given before. It was meant but to dis-
place them. Everyone of them had in past times accounted
for his waking happiness, or they would not have suggested
themselves now. If Coventry Patmore saw sex in everything
and everything in sex, it was everything that he was looking
at. It was upon his study of Coleridge and Swedenborg, Aris-
totle and Aquinas, that Emily Andrews broke. (It is his anno-
tated copies of these books that Mr. Everard Meynell cata-
384 COVENTRY PATMORE [June,
logues, save only his copy of St. Thomas, which he gave to
the British Museum.)
He was reading steadily through the book of universal
nature when he came upon Love's sweet page, and he did not
thereupon close the book. He had faith in the coherency of its
argument. Mr. Osbert Burdett has mapped out his book thus:
the theme and its hypothesis, the data of experience, ramifica-
tions, the philosophy of marriage, the inference, and its appli-
cations to society and art. This is a brilliant reconstruction of
the "book" referred to in some verses quoted above, and again
in those that follow. We return to the subject of similes:
To marry her and take her home:
The Poet, painting pureness, tells
Of lilies; figures power by Rome;
And each thing shows by something else!
But through the songs of poets look,
And who so lucky to have found
In universal nature's book
A likeness for a life so crown'd!
Who so lucky as Patmore to have found in universal nature
a likeness for so much ?
Of intimate speech where confession evokes confession:
Our confidences heavenward grew
Like fox-glove buds, in pairs disclosed.
Of a happy girl, between her undeclared rival lovers,
with their
. . . forced smiles, the shrouds
Of wrath, so hid as she was by,
Sweet moon between her lighted clouds.
And again, alone with her still-undeclared suitor:
. . . now and then, in cheek and eyes , ;
I saw or fancied such a glow
As when in summer-evening skies,
Some say, "It lightens," some say, "No."
To her, as to her lover, Patmore imparts his own meteor-
ological sensitiveness : Honoria writes to Felix :
The summer lightning was so bright
And when it flash'd I thought you spoke.
1921 ] COVENTRY PATMORE 385
Surely in no poem are the senses more delicate, more spirit-
ual? Nothing but a concordance to Patmore could do justice
to his sensitiveness to light; but take this, of hearing; going
to church, they entered,
while yet the tower
Was noisy with the finished chime.
Patmore was an amateur of all the arts, a master of one,
and an amateur of many sciences, and these supply him with
endless similes, and it is only his restraint of form which
hides the fact that he is as "metaphysical" in his conceits as
Donne or Francis Thompson:
As if I chaf d the sparks from glass
And said, "It lightens," hitherto
The songs I've made of love might pass
For all but for proportion true.
And,
You fit the taste for Paradise
To which your charms draw up the soul
As turning spirals draw the eyes.
I must now turn to Patmore's "system," to make, however,
no more than two remarks : the first intended to minimize the
accusations of mannishness and inhumane contempt some-
times brought against him; the second, to dissolve the sexual
form which, by a metaphor, has been imputed to his philos-
ophy. The subjects are intervolved.
I. The "two great sexes" which animated his world, and
his subordination of the feminine to the masculine element,
have their analogy in the threefold division of Plato's city.
His "Republic" is, politically, the ideal city, but spiritually it is
the just man. Politically, the "Republic" comprises three
classes, the legislative, the executive, and the populace, in an
ordered hierarchy of command and subordination. Spirit-
ually, each citizen, in each class, is a threefold entity, of in-
tellect, will, and passion, in which the same hierarchy of com-
mand and subordination must prevail. This aristocratic con-
ception was Patmore's also, politically, but no otherwise.
Political and spiritual classes are not conterminous: a
Sussex poacher might seem to him invincibly a pagan, but he
could recognize in an obscure and lonely townsman a mystical
vor,. cxm. 25
386 COVENTRY PATMORE [June,
insight into Scripture such as, he said, a bishop might envy.
And so with his sexual theory. Man partakes of both the mas-
culine and feminine natures and woman also is "homo.'' Spir-
itually, sex is only an "aspect," a "relation." The subjection
of women was, for Patmore, no more than a social and polit-
ical necessity, which no more prejudices her spiritual equality
than does social status. That this is his doctrine and not a
gloss of my own, the following quotation will prove:
Who tries to mend his wife, succeeds
As he who knows not what he needs.
He much affronts a worth as high
As his, and that equality
Of spirits in which abide the grace
And joy of her subjected place.
II. Patmore has said: "Nothing whatever exists, in a
single entity, but in virtue of its being thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis," and man, woman, and "homo" were but one in-
stance, even if the most conspicuous, of this stereoscopic view.
This conception pervades all Patmore's thought, but it was
not original with him, and is not to be called sexual except
by a metaphor; a metaphor derived from any other instance
of the same principle would be as valid. The proposition may
be illustrated by two of Patmore's own examples : a kite, and a
magnet. A kite is kept flying by two opposed forces, the
wind which would carry it away, the string and the weight
which together hold it opposed to the wind. A magnet at
once attracts and repels.
An example, none the less true that it has an appearance
of being a reductio ad absurdum, may be found in the title
of one of Patmore's poems: "Tamerton Church-tower." The
tower is one, but we cannot name it without thesis and anti-
thesis, each of which divides and subdivides. The first pair of
"yoked opposites" contrasts the homely town with the lonely
tower; but the name Tamerton is itself a synthesis of opposed
ideas: the flowing river, Tamar, and the fixed "ton;" and the
word "church-tower" sets the church and the tower in opposi-
tion both architecturally and in the associations each word has,
subjectively. And even so, "church" and "tower" are syn-
theses: the word "tower" implies at once base and spire, with
perhaps Thomas Hardy's homely bell-ringers on the solid
1921.] COVENTRY PATMORE 387
earth, and ponderous bells swinging aloft in giddy vacancy.
The church is a bar-magnet with its negative end in the porch
and its positive end in the altar, and every part is negative
in relation to what is in front of it and positive in relation to
all that is behind it, as even the porch is positive in relation
to the street, and the sin of fraud in the money-changers there
carried with it the guilt of sacrilege. The reader will see
that my analysis can be carried much further.
That all this was not intended in Patmore's title, 'Tamer-
ton Church-tower," makes it the better proof of his own prop-
osition: it show r s that it was in the nature of things and was
not his invention. The titles of his other books show the same
conjunction of opposed ideas: of what is remote with what is
homely, of the attractive with the repellent, of the appealing
with the severe, "The Angel: in the House," "The Unknown:
Eros," "Principle : in Art," "Religio : Poetae." He sets Religion
in one eye, and Poetry in the other, and looks on both indif-
ferently, in Brutus' sense of the word. Other examples of
reconciled contradictions are these:
If more I love high Heaven than thee,
I more than love thee, thee I am,
both in itself, and as set over against its direct opposite:
Thee whom even more than Heaven loved I have,
And yet have not been true even to thee.
Further examples are:
God's grace is the only grace
And all grace is the grace of God,
and such phrases as "lovely pride," "sweet pride," "lovely
awe," "ordered freedom," "commanded good."
And now I am to commend Coventry Patmore to Catholic
readers as a Catholic poet, that is, as one who had more than
an intellectual interest in Catholic doctrine, and gave it more
than an imaginative assent. I can allow myself no more than
two quotations and one comment.
(From Patmore's diary): "The relation of the soul
Christ as His betrothed wife is the key to the feeling with
which prayer and love and honor should be offered to Him."
388 COVENTRY PATMORE [June,
(A wife writes of her husband:)
For the sake of only love,
And that his gift, does he approve
I His wife entirely, as the Lord
The Church His Bride, whom thus the Word
Calls Black but Comely, Precious, Sweet,
Fair, Pleasant, Holy, yea, Complete,
When really she was no such thing!
But God knew well what He could bring
From nought, and He, her beauty's cause
Saw it, and praised it, ere it was.
So did, so does my lord, my friend
On whom for all things I depend;
Whose I am wholly, rather who
I am, so am in all things new;
My Love, my Life, my Reverence, yes,
And, in some sort, my Righteousness!
For wisdom does in him so shine
My conscience seems more his than mine.
Patmore had written these lines in the person of Jane, con-
cerning her husband. He canceled them, not that he would
unsay them, but would leave them unsaid. No human hus-
band, not even Felix ("Love in Glory"), not even Frederick
("Love Militant"), quite deserves them, and Jane (to whose
lowliness Patmore intrusts so many glorious things to say)
would scarcely have said them. But the lines were offered to
Christ, and are His only now, from a Poet who prayed in
secret:
In Godhead rise, thither flow back
All loves.
THE FLOWER OF ST. JOHN.
BY HARRIETTE WILBUR.
The herb that serves Saint John then grows a flower
When midsummer days wax sultriest.
Churton (The Lord of Barghley).
T. JOHN," says one old writer, " represents among
the Christian saints the Light par excellence; his
festival falls at the time of the summer solstice,
or on the twenty-fourth of June, the last of the
three days which mark the culmination of the
sun's ascension in the heavens. On this day the sun may be
said not to set, the night is so short, if night there be, for the
whole heavens in some places are luminous and bright."
Hence the bonfires that in many places are built on the eve of
St. John, in honor of the birth of the forerunner which pre-
ceded by six months that of the Saviour, Christ. And so, too,
St. John appropriates the flowers of light and sunshine; as the
Scarlet Lychnis, called the Great Candlestick, which was sup-
posed to be lighted up for St. John the Baptist, who was him-
self "a burning and a shining light:"
The Scarlet Lychnis, the garden's pride,
Flames at St. John the Baptist's tide,
an old Folk Rhyme says.
But the herb which bears his name, and is particularly
dedicated to his service, is the plant famous in flower lore :
Hypericum, all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears. William Cowper.
"Flaring St.-John's-wort," Bayard Taylor calls it, and it is
"Yellow St.-John's-wort," according to Celia Thaxter, the
flowers, with their golden, sun-shaped discs being especially
fitted to bear his name. Then, too, it comes into blossom
about the time of the summer solstice, while, on the twenty-
ninth of August, the anniversary of his decollation, its red-
blotched leaves, as if marked with his blood, and its red sap,
seem to pay honor to his martyrdom.
390 THE FLOWER OF ST. JOHN [June,
Being thus blessed by name and associations, it has long
been considered the wonderful herb that cures all sorts of
wounds, and hypericum red, a red resinous substance ex-
tracted from the plant, was formerly much used as a healing
salve. It was also believed that, taken internally, the plant
would cure melancholy, "if it is gathered on a Friday, in the
hour of Jupiter, and worn awhile about the neck, in addition."
Michael Drayton prescribes "for the stone, that herb we call
St. John." In Sicily, it is usual to gather St.-John's-wort and
dip it in oil, so transforming it into a "balm for every wound."
And, as St. John the Baptist baptized by water, a popular
tradition found in Tuscany has it that the dew which falls on
these plants before the sun rises on the morning of St. John's
Day is capable of preserving the eyes from all diseases during
the rest of the year. An ointment was also made of its blos-
soms; and, indeed, so valuable was it considered, that to those
who contrive to get a good return for their meagre work or
money it is said: "You give me colocynth for Herb John"-
colocynth, a member of the cucumber family, being also of
medical importance.
One curious belief is that of the Tyrolese mountaineer,
who puts the wort into his shoes, believing that so long as it is
there, he can climb or walk without fatigue.
One species (Hypericum androscemwn) has gained the
name of Tutsan, or Titsum as it is called in Devonshire, a
word which comes from the French Toute saine, or Heal-all.
In Brazil, the Hypericum is said to be an antidote for the bite
of poisonous serpents; in Russia it is used as a defence against
hydrophobia; while in England it was employed internally
against mania, as well as melancholy.
As St. John's festival falls at that time of the year when the
nights are the shortest, and the greatest amount of light is en-
joyed, the period naturally brings the powers of darkness into
collision with the powers of light. So Hypericum, coming into
blossom about St. John's Day and having flowers which re-
minded of the sun with its darkness and evil-dispersing rays,
it was long regarded as specially powerful to avert ill. It
used to be gathered on the eve of St. John's Day and hung up
near the door or windows as a preservative against evil sick-
ness, lightning, and works of darkness of all kinds. It was at
one time in great repute for its supposed influence in conjura-
1921.] THE FLOWER OF ST. JOHN 391
tions and enchantments, as we learn from the fact that it used
to be called by the Italians Fuga dsemonum, or, as we might
say in English, "scare-devil," "devil's-flight," or "devil-
chaser." It was thought that if a sprig of St.-John's-wort were
placed over the door, along with a cross, no witch or demon
could enter; while the Scotch formerly carried it about their
persons as a charm against witchcraft. This belief is expressed
in the charm sung by Meg Merrilies, in Scott's Guy Mannering,
at the birth of Harry Bertram :
Trefoil, Vervain, John's Wort, Dill,
Hinder witches of their will.
For, though it was one of the ingredients witches were some-
times supposed to put into the baleful drinks prepared for
their enemies, it could also be used as a counter-charm, since
folk-lore teaches that the plants and materials employed by
magicians, sorcerers, shamans, tombas, and other dealers in
the black arts, are equally efficacious if employed against their
spells, hence in "Maid Barbara:"
St.-John's-wort and fresh cyclamen she in his chamber kept
From the power of evil angels to guard him while he slept.
In some places, it was customary to burn this plant, the
smoke and flame being supposed to possess special efficacy
against various forms of evil, particularly when thrown into
the St. John's Eve bonfires. The name Hypericam is an addi-
tional testimony to the fact that it was regarded as possessing
magic properties over evil spirits, for the botanical name
comes from a Greek word, meaning "to hold over in such a
way as to protect from anything;" others named the plant
Sol Terrestris, or Terrestrial Sun, since just as the spirits of
darkness fly before the light of the solar orb, so do evil spirits
fly at sight of this. The widespread belief in its efficacy is
shown by an extract from "Every Man In His Humour:" "On
the Vigil of St. John Baptist, every man's door is shadowed
with greene birch, long fennel, St.-John's-wort, Orpin, White
Lilies, and such like." Perhaps, one reason for this belief is
the perforated leaves, pierced with minute holes, said to have
been made by the devil; and since he disliked the plant so
much, there must be some reason for his hate, found in its
magical powers, of course.
However, it is said to be dangerous to gather the herb on
392 THE FLOWER OF ST. JOHN [June,
St. John's Day, after the sun has risen; in Altmark they say
that if you should do so, you will suffer from cancer. And in
the Isle of Man, they believe in treating this plant with re-
spect, for they say (or did say before the incursion of visitors
drove all individuality from the place), that "if you tread on
the St.-John's-wort after sunset, a fairy horse will rise from
the earth and carry you about all night, leaving you in the
morning wherever he may chance to be at sunrise."
It is also believed to have the magic property of revealing
the presence of witches, and of exposing them engaged in the
pursuit of plying their wicked calling, so people, armed with
St.-John's-wort, were supposed to be able to see them, and by
mounting the housetop, or some other convenient high view-
point, would observe many marvelous things during the night
preceding St. John's Day.
And sacred to St. John,
The magic flower that maidens cull at dawn,
notes William Story, in his poem, "In the Glen," referring to
the use of this plant for the purpose of fortune-telling. For in
Denmark, many an anxious maiden places the St.-John's-wort
between the beams under the roof, that she may learn her fate;
the usual custom is to put one plant for herself and another for
her sweetheart; should these grow toward each other, it is an
omen of her approaching wedding. Another method is to
gather a blossom, or a leaf; should it wither before the day is
over she must live the year out a spinster.
The wonderful herb whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride,
is a Folk Saying on the St.-John's-wort.
However, should you have no fear of illness, lightning,
witches, or spinsterhood, there will be no harm in your seeking
Thoreau's "upland pastures where the johnswort grows," at
daybreak on June 24th. The flowers will be there, and the
birds, and the dew, and the glorious dawn, and the wonder of
a waking day, and in this hour alone with nature and nature's
God, you will receive such a revelation of the Creator's loving
care for His children that you can face the future with hope
and equanimity.
flew Books.
PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. By John Howley,
M.A. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co. $2.50.
Psychologists have of late years invaded the domain of the
spiritual life, seeking to throw light on the nature of its phe-
nomena and on the laws they assume regulate them. The liter-
ature of the subject has been, to a large extent, in the hands of
men who ignore the supernatural. The work before us will be
eagerly hailed by all interested in the art of arts the guidance of
souls who will find every chapter illuminating and informative,
also by those who are restive under the pseudo science of the
spiritual life formulated by agnostic psychologists in their polite
attack on religion.
In an introductory chapter, Professor Howley outlines the
matter and method of the study of religious experience. Passing
to conversion which, naturally, holds a central place in the study
of the inner life, he criticizes the theories of those who, like Wil-
liam James, look for the explanation of it in the ill-explored realm
of the sub-conscious. The reader will note with much interest
the extraordinary importance Professor Howley attaches to the
Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which, "in the hands of Canis-
ius became the Labarum of the Counter Reformation and saved
Germany from being totally lost to Catholicism. . . . The or-
dinary spirituality of the Catholic Church today is the spirituality
of the Exercises, because they are the compendium and quintes-
sence of the historic spirituality of the Church, the ascetic lore
of centuries of saints and doctors, systematized by the religious
genius of one who was the personification of sanctified common
sense."
In the two following chapters our author analyzes conver-
sion as it is witnessed in Evangelical revivals, and sets forth the
true nature of it as it is exemplified in Catholic circles.
In the second part of the book Professor Howley deals with
various conceptions of mysticism. Reminding us that "it is a
complete anachronism to speak of meditation in the modern
sense of the word in connection with the Christians and monks
of the first fourteen centuries (at that time they prayed; they
did not meditate)," and dismissing with contempt the theories of
agnostic psychology, he takes up the views of some leading Cath-
olic ascetical writers. He joins issue with those who, like Rodri-
394 NEW BOOKS [June,
guez, regard mystical experience as "something miraculous in
character ... a Divine favor which it would be dangerous to
desire." He also questions the view of Father Poulain, who denies
the character of true mysticism to the prayer of simplicity. To
Father Poulain's treatise, Les Graces d' Oraison, he pays a gen-
erous tribute as "a monument of industrious research, destined
to rank with Scaramelli's great work as a storehouse of expe-
rience and quite indispensable to the student of mystical phe-
nomena." Surely and steadily, step by step, he proceeds to elu-
cidate the true idea of mysticism, and the manner in which the
soul is disposed for it, drawing copiously on the great spiritual
writers of the Church for proof and illustration, analyzing, as far
as it can be analyzed, a spiritual process which in the nature of
things must always remain more or less illusive, more or less
inscrutable.
Mysticism he defines as "a quasi-intuition of the Divine."
"It is very probable," he concludes, "that more Christians receive
mystical experience than is usually thought; still the vast bulk
do not progress much beyond a well-directed cultivation of the
self for God. . . . They will not lose all, including self, to find
all; and so they remain in the middle passage."
In the literature which has been growing around the psychol-
ogy of religious experience there has been a sad and strange lack
of works from Catholic pens. This clamant need has now been
met by a book which for sanity of thought, acuteness of analysis,
and masterly grasp of a vast and difficult subject will for a long
time to come hold a place all its own in the literature of
mysticism.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. With Introduction,
Text and Notes. By Robert Eaton. New York: Benziger
Brothers. $2.00.
Father Eaton of the Birmingham Oratory is already known
to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD by his work on the Psalter,
Sing Ye to the Lord. His commentary on St. Mark's Gospel is a
welcome addition to our growing Biblical literature. In the intro-
duction the author outlines for us the personality of St. Mark, his
place in the history of the Apostolic Age, and his personal rela-
tion to the moving forces of the Age, St. Peter, St. Paul, and his
own cousin, St. Barnabas. Next we have the Petrine character of
St. Mark's Gospel, and on this important point the author calls
attention to the numerous small touches in the Markan narrative
which make for the vividness and originality of the Gospel, and
thus furnish proof that it goes back to an eyewitness St. Peter.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 395
Finally, we have a brief statement of the date, language, and place
of composition of the Gospel, its plan, object, and special features.
The body of the book is the commentary proper. The sacred
text is conveniently placed at the top of the page; below are the
author's notes. The textual notes will prove very useful; the
author constantly keeps in view the reading of the original Greek.
The exegetical notes are brief and concise, but they furnish all
that is necessary for a good understanding of the sacred text.
The appendix contains studies on the Pharisees, Sadducees,
Scribes, Herodians, and the Synagogue.
The book is popular in character, and does not enter into the
more intricate problems of Biblical criticism which would interest
only the professional scripturist or theologian. But it is written
in a fine Catholic spirit, and its pages bespeak the author's famil-
iarity with the Biblical problems of our time. Something might
have been added on the Synoptic Question, which is of such im-
portance for the history and exegesis of the Synoptic Gospels.
The Biblical Commission has on two occasions spoken on
the matter. The discussion of the "clausula" (Mark xvi. 9-20)
is far too brief, and the suggestion that the lack of continuity be-
tween the opening verses of chapter xvi. and the "clausula" is
probably due to the fact that some verses are missing (p. 188),
will hardly commend itself as the solution. The author passes
over the thorny problem of the seeming discrepancy between the
Synoptics and St. John on the chronology of the Passion. The
Eschatologists exaggerate when they make the "Kingdom of God"
refer exclusively to future life; our author (p. 6) goes to the oppo-
site extreme that the phrase "invariably means the Church on
earth."
THE LAST KNIGHT, AND OTHER POEMS. By Theodore May-
nard. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. $1.60 net.
Even here in his newly adopted country, Theodore Maynard
may be said to have arrived poetically at the point where his new
work has a right to prompt welcome and appreciation. He is of
the "little flock" of seers, who see not only far, but straight
through the somewhat tangled ways of modern life and art. And
whenever his work is written at the flood-tide of inspiration-
even when, peradventure, it is not it may be counted upon for a
verbal beauty at once dreamy and definite, for a vivid, often
magical, interpretation of nature, for a very simple and wholly
profound allegiance to Catholic ideals and for that rollicking
verve which distinguishes all disciples of the "Chesterbelloc"
philosophy.
396 NEW BOOKS [June,
This is the second volume of Mr. Maynard's poems (he has
been responsible, meanwhile, for a novel and an anthology!)
published in the United States, and it is of a delectable variety.
Most engaging poems to children the poet's own are here, with
a sheaf of admirable sonnets, chivalric legends and serio-comic
ballades, a group of worthy War verses, and poems in that strain
of bold and tender mysticism which remains his greatest achieve-
ment. Several of these last are love-songs, Patmorean in matter
as before, exquisitely Maynardian in manner. And side by side
with these since, obviously, they stand close in the poet's own
vision are such soaring things as "Laus Deo" and "O Felix
Culpa." These spiritual poems are really important in their lyrical
quickening of dogma : and they compensate Mr. Maynard's present
collection for the absence of that unforgettable praise of "Holy
Laughter" in its predecessor.
IRELAND IN THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM. By James Hogan.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Vol. I., 1500-1557. $5.00.
The literary revival in Ireland which marked the opening
years of the twentieth century has now been followed by re-
doubled activity of Irish scholars in the field of historical study.
Apart from the polemical literature that has marked the struggle
for self-government during the past decade, many works of solid
learning have appeared dealing with social and economic, as well
as political conditions. Professor Hogan, of University College,
Cork, now adds to the growing list a history of Ireland in the
European System. The author believes that conditions are not
yet ripe, in point of research and scholarship, for a history of
early and mediaeval Ireland to be undertaken on an adequate and
consecutive plan, but that the reverse is true with respect to the
history of modern Ireland. An immense body of historical ma-
terial in the form of original records, State papers, memoirs, and
letters has now become available to the student of the modern
period. Professor Hogan has chosen in the present volume the
field of the relations between Ireland and the system of alliances
and counter-alliances which prevailed in Europe during the first
half of the sixteenth century.
Professor Hogan has made a notable contribution to the study
of Irish history. The elaborate introduction to the volume in
which he sketches the background of Ireland's relations to Eng-
land and to Europe forms an admirable essay in itself, and will
enable the uninitiated reader to understand the meaning of the
shifting alliances which fill the pages of the history of the six-
teenth century. The analogies between the past and the present
1921.] NEW BOOKS 397
position of Ireland are obvious at every turn. But it is not with
any object of partisan propaganda that the author has written.
He is merely a scholar, intent upon historical truth for its own
sake and its own interest. To those who love Ireland even the
more outlying portions of her history will awaken their sym-
pathetic attention and lead, it is to be hoped, to similar studies
in related fields.
IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL, By Bernard Hollander, M.D. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Two volumes. $20.00 per set.
There is only one word which can be applied to these two
volumes and that is Dominie Sampson's, "Prodigious!" Pro-
digious in size, for it consists of two large volumes with nearly
nine hundred pages of closely printed matter. Prodigious in dili-
gent, but unfortunately misdirected, search of literature, for there
are not less than sixteen hundred names in the list of author-
ities given. Prodigious also in its glaring mistakes, as we shall
show by a few selections. Of course, as might be expected in any
book by this author, a great deal of space is devoted to the con-
sideration of the works of Gall, a writer whom scientific men,
to the great disgust of Dr. Hollander, absolutely refuse to con-
sider seriously. In fact, some of them have spoken of him in
terms which show the reverse of respect.
We have no quarrel with Dr. Hollander for his partiality for
Gall or for phrenology, though we marvel at both, and we agree
with the concluding statement of his book that man is "not a
conscious machine, but a spiritual being."
What we do quarrel with is his amazing ignorance on points
which ought to be, and are, as clear as any historical matters can
be. For instance:
Volume I., p. 81 : "For three hundred years Christianity
was a religion without a ritual, or a priesthood, or temples, or
altars, or public worship." A most astounding statement. The
writer cannot be thinking of Christianity as commonly under-
stood, for that had a ritual since, as is everywhere admitted, the
Canon of the Mass in all its essentials, if not in its entirety, is
apostolic in date. It had an episcopate and orders, for St. Paul
instructs St. Timothy in the duties of a bishop. It had altars and
public worship, though Dr. Hollander seems not to have heard of
Roma Sotteranea, nor ever to have read the always interesting
Acts of the Apostles or the little familiar bits at the end of many
of the Epistles. It is not too much to say that it is impossible
to trust, without collation with other books, any man who is
capable of a statement such as this and, as no busy person can
398 NEW BOOKS [June,
be constantly correcting his author, we cannot commend this
work to anyone who is not addicted to the hobby of collecting
startling mistakes. Let us take a very few more. Page 105:
"Aquinas brought science again under the sway of theological
methods and ecclesiastical control." A complete misstatement,
for what the Angelic Doctor did and what neo-Scholastics are
doing today was to take the facts (let us be clear that they are
facts) of science and employ them in the elucidation of philo-
sophical theses.
Volume I., p. 117: Galileo "died in 1642, the prisoner of the
Inquisition. He was not allowed to make a will, and he was
denied the right of burial in consecrated ground." As a matter of
common, vulgar, historical fact, Galileo died in his own house
fortified by all the sacraments of the Church and by the special
blessing of the reigning Pontiff, and was buried in the Church of
Santa Croce in his own town hardly unconsecrated ground.
Volume I., p. 128: The old stupid falsehood exposed time
after time as to the supposed prohibition of anatomy by the
Bull of Boniface VIII. "It was universally and constantly con-
strued to prohibit dissection." This statement is not ignorance
only, but pure ineptitude, for the Bull, as he says, was published
in 1300, yet the author of the above dogmatic statement as to the
prohibition of anatomy, tells us a few lines further down, first,
that Mondino publicly dissected two bodies in Bologna in 1315,
and secondly, that public dissections were decreed (whatever that
means) in the Universities of Montpellier in 1366, at Venice in
1368, and at four other universities, which he names, shortly
afterwards. What is to be thought of the critical acumen of the
writer who can place these statements, utterly opposed to one
another, on the same page?
Volume I., p. 178: "Geology became established as a science,
having broken loose from the trammels of theology" (in 1776).
Dr. Hollander has heard of Bishop Nicholaus Stensen as an anat-
omist, but is evidently unaware that he is universally recognized
as the Father of Modern Geology, and especially that he settled the
question of fossils which our author supposes to have remained
unsettled until geology escaped from the dungeons of the Inqui-
sition. Stensen, by the way, died in 1687, just about a hundred
years before geology, according to Dr. Hollander, got out of its
prison.
The fact is, his book is full of mistakes, even on small points,
e. g., Professor D. J. Cunningham (a very distinguished anatomist
who died only the other day) was not Lecturer on Anatomy in
the University of Belfast (which did not exist as a University in
1921.] NEW BOOKS 399
his time), but Professor of Anatomy in the University of Dublin
(see p. 227). It is a small and unimportant point, but it shows
the kind of carelessness, to put it mildly, exhibited in the previous
quotations. It really moves to indignation that at this date and
with all the means of information open to them, those who
we must suppose desire to be regarded as serious writers should
be guilty of errors of which a child of twelve ought to be ashamed.
REMINISCENCES OF LEO NICOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI. By
Maxim Gorky. New York: B. W. Huebsch. $1.50.
It is always interesting to see what an anarchist thinks of his
god. These reminiscences of Tolstoi by Gorky present a rather
unusual picture of the god directly and of the anarchist in-
directly. Written when he was much younger, in the form of
fragmentary notes, the first part of the book gives a vivid por-
trayal of the great Russian. The second part consists of a letter
written by Gorky on the occasion of Tolstoi's death and constitutes
a recapitulation of his opinions. In the light of Gorky's present
activities as a leading member of the Soviet this picture is il-
luminating.
He shows a Tolstoi who might have been a cross between a
philosopher and a satyr. A god on the mountain in one mood,
a peasant in muck the next; a man of great tenderness, gentle
appreciation and a quaint sense of humor; his talk ranges from
God to women God reverently and women a little cynically. The
views of the master and the student are summed up in one
passage :
"The minority feel the need of God because they have got
everything else, the majority because they have nothing."
To this Gorky appends: "I would put it differently: the
majority believe in God from cowardice, only the few believe in
him from fullness of soul."
When you weigh these two opinions you see the different
viewpoints of the men. Gorky's is more cynical and penetrating
but his observations do not always pentrate to the truth. That is
the great mistake many of us make we think that because a
mind penetrates the surface of things it must necessarily plumb
Reality. Tolstoi believed in God he belonged to both the minor-
ity who have everything and, by an act of his own will, to the
majority who have nothing.
Unquestionably Tolstoi had the detachment of the mystic, the
acceptance, the supple will, the other-worldliness that one reads in
the words of those whose hearts are set on other things.
There are other sides of Tolstoi shown in this book, and would
400 NEW BOOKS [June,
that space permitted us to speak of them. This view must
suffice this view of Tolstoi as the mystic. For he was a mystic,
and in studying the many-sided phases of the mystical attitude,
Tolstoi's is a chapter that cannot be overlooked. To the end he
was, as Gorky witnesses, a man with an active and living faith.
His final rebuke to this young anarchist as Gorky was then is
amazingly direct, and after hearing it Gorky wrote:
"And I, who do not believe in God, looked at him for some
reason very cautiously and a little timidly, I looked and thought:
'The man is godlike/ "
A THEORY OF THE MECHANISM OF SURVIVAL. By W.
Whately Smith. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50.
Numerous attempts have been made to explain the psychic
phenomena connected with abnormal states, clairvoyance and
mediumistic operations. Some have simply disposed of these
phenomena as frauds; others, such as Raupert and some of our
Catholic theologians, have regarded them as evil intentioned oper-
ations of wicked spirits; scientific materialists have, as a rule,
offered some mechanistic explanation.
One of the most ingenious explanations of the latter group
has recently come from Mr. W. Whately Smith. His subtitle,
"The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications," indicates his line of
reasoning. The idea of evolving a plausible explanation of such
psychic phenomena by the application of the Fourth Dimension,
dates back at least to the Slade-Zoellner investigation in 1878, but
this work of Mr. Smith is the first formal and comprehensive
attempt.
After explaining four-dimensional space, the author prepares
our mind for its application to various phenomena by having us
suppose a two-dimensional space inhabited by two-dimensional
creatures with two-dimensional perceptions. It is, of course, clear
that such hypothetical creatures can have no knowledge of phe-
nomena involving three-dimensional operations. In the same way
beings such as we are, perceiving normally only through a three-
dimensional vehicle, can have no idea of operations or facts in-
volved in a four-dimensional world. But the fact that we are not
cognizant of four-dimensional existence does not justify us in
denying it. Thus prepared, we are taken through a number of
applications of the fourth dimension to cases of clairvoyance, "ex-
teriorization," "apparent penetration of matter by matter," and
telekinesis. The writer also considers the fourth dimension in
relation to Time in order to explain cases of pre-vision; applies it
to problems of Vitality and Will ; and suggests that it may correct
1921.] NEW BOOKS 401
many of our notions and solve many of our difficulties relative to
the physical sciences.
Having made these applications, the writer proposes a mech-
anism of consciousness that will function both in the three and
four-dimensional states. He is not certain whether there should
be two or three vehicles of psychic activity. There should cer-
tainly be one vehicle for normal, three-dimensional perception,
and one for four-dimensional perception; but whether this latter
can also function three-dimensionally, or whether a third vehicle,
a connecting link between the two states, is required, is left open
to conjecture. If this connecting link, this "Etheric Double,"
does exist, it leaves the body at death in the form of rarified,
etherialized matter, and either passes off, a more refined third
vehicle and itself discontinues existence, or begins functioning
as a purely four-dimensional vehicle.
In spite of the insistence of the author that this theory does
not and will not conflict with religious dogmas, the hypothesis
gives rise to grave suspicions. Four-dimensional space and the
four-dimensional vehicle will scarcely accord with the traditional
belief in Heaven and Hell, and with the traditional concept of the
condition of the soul after death. It seems better suited as a
working hypothesis for Theosophy than for Christianity. If this
theory is carried to its logical conclusions, the final resurrection of
the body becomes at least superfluous. Mr. Smith suggests as one
of the advantages of this hypothesis the harmonization of antag-
onistic materialistic and theistic thought, but throughout the work
we gain the impression that this harmony is effected by completely
materializing the soul. Is his mechanistic soul not merely a
chemico-biological soul? The Theory of the Mechanism of Sur-
vival is interesting, but even as a mere hypothesis it is apparently
dangerous.
THE LIFE OF ST. MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE. By Rt. Rev.
E. Bougaud, D.D. New York: Benziger Brothers. $2.75 net.
This handsomely executed reprint of Bishop Bougaud's work,
which was first put out a number of years ago, serves as fitting
reminder of the first anniversary of St. Margaret Mary's canon-
ization. The writing of such a life makes large demand on heart
and head, and the lapse of time has but brought into clearer
relief the enduring delicacy of Monseigneur Bougaud's craftsman-
ship. The good Bishop has gone to his well-earned rest, and his
own heart is in the custody of the Visitandines of Orleans; but
his praise of the Sacred Heart springs forth as freshly as when the
words were first penned.
VOL. cxni. 26
402 NEW BOOKS [June,
The author spent ten years of his priesthood as chaplain to
the Visitation nuns at Dijon, his native city. Hence, he was in a
position to treat with discrimination the genesis and sublime
progress of the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. The history of
that devotion is the history of the spiritual daughters of St.
Francis de Sales and St. Chantal; as well as the history of all that
is best and most heroic in the Catholic Faith of modern France.
The Bishop of Laval has succeeded in achieving an always difficult
literary feat, that of maintaining a proper balance between the
historical and the devotional. Added to this, both translator and
illustrator have contributed to a setting that is worthy, in every
way, of the "Pearl of Paray."
All will appreciate somewhat of the grandeur of the Revela-
tions made through the humble convent grill to a humble virgin.
Surely, too, there will be no reader uninterested in the scholarly,
yet far from pedantic, list of references to the Sacred Heart,
dating from the early ages of Christianity in what may be termed
the "prseparatio" of the Sacred Heart's reign and the account
of Its Apostolate as given in the thirteenth and succeeding chap-
ters. A skilled hand has added the conclusion, which comprises,
amongst other valuable matter, the words of His Holiness, Bene-
dict XV., concerning the Saint's canonization, and a statement of
the fact, very interesting to Americans, that to the United States
belongs the honor of having first dedicated a church to the Sacred
Heart that erected at Conewago, Pennsylvania, by the Jesuit,
Father Pellentz, in 1787.
Cause for congratulation is to be found in the price of the
biography, which is, for these days, extremely moderate. It
would, however, have gained very considerably by the insertion
of an index at the end.
THE TEACHING OF RELIGION. Religion, First Manual. Re-
ligion, First Course. By Roderick MacEachen, D.D. New
York: The Macmillan Co. $1.20, $1.28, 28 cents respectively.
With these volumes a new note is struck in our elementary
teaching of religion. Some may consider the ideas here expressed
as radical and iconoclastic, but any who have been confronted by
the almost hopeless futility of mere routine recitation, will wel-
come and applaud this system of Dr. MacEachen. In it, he in-
sists on the volitional as an essential aid to the intellectual train-
ing of the child, on the child's own expression of the Divine
truths, rather than on the "memory phrase" of an abstruse theo-
logical conclusion. His complete theory, as contained in The
Teaching of Religion, will furnish thought for the teacher, not
1921.] NEW BOOKS 403
only of religion, but of all elementary grades. It is a logical and
sensible system, based on actual observation and knowledge of
the child mind and impulses, and seeks to develop the awakening
faculties in a sane and natural way. In the latter part of the
book, Dr. MacEachen applies his theory, and -outlines the manner
in which the main doctrines of religion may be presented. The
other two books, Religion, First Course and Religion, First Manual,
are companion volumes, and show his theory in working attire.
The former book is aptly and beautifully illustrated, and will
supply material for many interesting classes. The latter is a book
of questions, not in the traditional, abstract form of the cate-
chism, but such as would naturally occur in a child's conversa-
tion. These books fulfill a need, and may their publication augur
a new and more effective teaching of God's truth to the little ones.
LIFE AND LETTERS. By J. C. Squire. New York: George H.
Doran Co. $3.00 net.
Mr. Squire has already been introduced to the reading public
in the first and second series of Books in General, published
under the pseudonym of "Solomon Eagle;" here he drops the
mask and speaks in his own person. So apt was his first title,
and so closely does he follow in this the path outlined in the
earlier publications, that he might have not unprofitably made
this his third series on Books in General. He has collected here
some forty from his weekly contributions to Land and Water,
just as the first and second series were recruited, if memory
serves, from The New Statesman.
Mr. Squire's tastes in reading are catholic; he ranges from
Chinese folk-lore to Anatole France, from Dr. Johnson and Pope
to Marryat and Sax Rohmer, with the deftness of touch and sure-
ness of attack which have brought him, still a young man, as
such things go, to the editor's chair of The London Mercury.
His literary criticism is informed with a large-hearted optimism;
he finds idealism in Swift, a large imagination alive to natural
beauty and the mystery of life in Pope, even generosity in Rabe-
lais. He has written a sincerely appreciative review of Mr. Ches-
terton's Short History of England, a book not calculated to
arouse enthusiasm in the breast of the English critic. His opti-
mism does not blind him, however, to moral values. Writing of
Anatole France, for instance, after a just estimate of his gifts,
he goes on to say: "He is a connoisseur first and a man after-
wards: taste and wit are for him substitutes for morality and
religion. The philosophy which has dominated Anatole France
has made him, with some deliberation, seal the springs of enthu-
404 NEW BOOKS [June,
siasm, of love, of worship. He feels himself larger than life, but
he is not. If he lives, and I think he will live, he will live as a
maker of bijouterie, a craftsman, a witty and dainty essayist."
He is equally frank in his appreciation of George Meredith and
Walt Whitman.
The disadvantage inhering in work of this type is that it is
bound to be, of its very nature, ephemeral, lacking in that per-
manency of interest which alone could raise it from journalism
to literature. By far the larger number of these contributions
are reprinted book reviews; they have already been deprived of
the timeliness concomitant with the appearance of the book.
They represent the author's personal reaction to the book in his
hand, and can cover but one aspect of a many-sided subject.
Hence they are not intended to present the author's full mind on
any one topic; and those who will disagree with his pronounce-
ments and there are sure to be many who cannot see with him
on, say, Meredith and Whitman should not in justice demand of
Mr. Squire that he do more than the scope of the review allowed.
Within a narrow compass he has packed a great deal of shrewd
and original commentary, on letters, indeed, rather than on life,
which rests on wide reading and sympathetic observation: and
while the book is not a literary history to be kept on a shelf for
frequent reference, it will be read by many with interest and
profit.
HISTORY OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH INFANTRY,
U. S. A. Compiled by Gerald F. Jacobson. New York: The
Devinne Press. $5.00.
From the regimental seal and its motto, "Pro Patria et
Gloria," on the cover to the diagram map of the regiment's glor-
ious operations at the back of this stout, well-bound, perfectly
printed book this history of the famous old Seventh New York
Infantry of the New York National Guard, and of its fighting in
France when mustered into the Federal service as the "One Hun-
dred and Seventh Infantry, U. S. A.," is in all respects a model of
what a regimental history should be. It has great value as a con-
tribution to the general history of American participation in the
Great War. In addition, it is a most noteworthy example of
regimental unity, of the esprit de corps of the celebrated Seventh
Infantry, and of the literary and artistic ability of its members.
For the book is not done by hireling hands, it is the joint product
of the regiment itself. It was produced under the direction of the
Colonel of the regiment, Mortimer D. Bryant; its compiler, Gerald
F, Jgcobson, is a sergeant; its two editors are Corporal Leslie W,
1921.] NEW BOOKS 405
Rowland and Sergeant Harry T. Mitchell, and each company and
each department and special company of the regiment supplies its
own historian, to the number of sixteen, while the remarkable,
vivid, powerful illustrations are all, with the exception of the of-
ficial photographs, the work of regimental artists, who are buck
privates, corporals and sergeants. Indeed, there is about this
book the unity, the strength, the harmony and the finality of re-
sult which were the great "notes" of the War work of the nation
itself. The reader is reminded of the communal or guild works
of the past ages of faith, works in which all concerned wrought
in the one spirit of brotherly cooperation.
The battle of the Hindenburg line was the most important
of the actions in which the One Hundred and Seventh gained
glory at the price which is simply, and with stark eloquence, told
in the long list of the regiment's dead but the battle of La Selle
River, the battle of Jonc de Mer Ridge, and the engagements at
St. Maurice, East Poperinghe, and elsewhere are also part of the
splendid record.
Of special interest to Catholics is the chapter contributed by
Chaplain Peter E. Hoey, a Paulist Father, one of the four chap-
lains with the regiment. That the impression of unity, the spirit
of brotherhood, which even to the most casual reader of the book
is so obvious, is not a forced or a sentimental interpretation, is
made strikingly and authoritatively evident by Father Hoey.
"Catholic, Protestant, and Jew were all alike to me," he writes,
"for in their hearts and souls there dwelt a common nobility,
within their breasts there burned a common ideal, they were
actuated by a unity of purpose which should ever be typical of
the Sons of America." And from Father Hoey's chapter there
issues a striking passage, the message of his experiences with the
regiment, in which there is also, perhaps, the lesson of the War
itself to all the world : the lesson of the power of Love : "Cold in
death, with bodies torn and crushed and mutilated, yet did I
find many a rosary pressed to cold, dead lips, and many a
mother's prayer book all sodden with blood, resting close to the
heart which had ceased to beat. It was a very significant fact
that in almost every instance we found upon the bodies of the
dead either of two things a woman's picture, a symbol of her
love, or a religious memento, a fruit of her love. Ah, if woman
only knew the place where men have enshrined her, if she only
knew her wondrous power for good, if she only realized in part
to what extent she stirs the wells of man's inner being, she would
storm the heart of God Himself for purity, for deeper love, for
sympathy and keener vision, that she might accomplish the
406 NEW BOOKS [June,
destiny which God has given her to achieve. But perhaps here,
too, the War has wrought a change. I could not help but wonder
at the intensity of the love with which the boys almost worshipped
their dear ones at home. Today, in that love, I see a remedy for
a world disease."
QUICKSANDS OF YOUTH. By Franklin Chase Hoyt, Presiding
Justice, Children's Court of the City of New York. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75.
This volume of two hundred and forty-one pages contains a
series of stories "telling of youth's encounter with the law." They
are based on personal experiences of Justice Hoyt. No technical
terms are used. A simple narrative style is employed throughout.
The tragedies and the comedies that pass before a Children's
Court in a great city are described by typical instances drawn
from the records. The author includes here and there touches of
comment and interpretation on problems in child life and the
spirit and aims of children's courts. The reviewer found the
keenest delight in reading the volume. The incidents described
are highly instructive. The tone throughout is optimistic, but it
never departs from the region of facts. Teachers, parents, clergy-
men who are not well informed as to the actual operation of
Juvenile Courts will find Justice Hoyt's volume helpful to the
greatest degree. Social workers who are well informed will read
the volume with genuine pleasure. Who would not wish to know
more about the ingenious truant who had convinced his mother
that the marks C and D were the best given in his school. He
had explained that A meant awful; B indicated bad; while C and
D meant respectively corking and dandy.
The tone of this volume is most wholesome, and fully in
keeping with the splendid qualities that its author brings to the
administration of the Children's Court over which he presides.
FLAME OF THE FOREST. By Constance Bishop. New York:
Benziger Brothers. $2.00.
As a picture of life in India, Constance Bishop's story is of
great interest to the untraveled Westerner, for the insight it gives
into the fanaticism, cruelty, and superstition of the elusive, pagan
East.
The novel is overcrowded with a host of the most unattractive
Anglo-Indians and Eurasians, who gossip, flirt, lie, steal, and write
slanderous, anonymous letters. They are certainly a sorry set,
although, as we judge, drawn to the life.
The hero is pursued for years by a demon of a woman doctor,
1921.] NEW BOOKS 407
who tries to win him through the medium of her lies and pagan
magic. Luckily the priests manage to kill her just in time at a
temple service. On the other hand, he is in love with a drunken
rascal's wife a purely platonic affair, of course, although the
husband naturally thinks otherwise. A very obliging man-eating
tiger disposes of the husband, and the future seems bright for the
devoted pair.
The heroine, on the verge of entering the Church, makes "the
great refusal" to marry a heartless, agnostic biologist, who drives
her blind through overwork. His cruelty is a blessing in disguise,
for it brings her at last to the true Faith.
The story is well written, dramatically told, but the Catholic
characters are not types calculated to attract thinking non-Cath-
olics to the Church.
HEART BLOSSOMS. By Mary Donatus. Villa Maria College
Press. $1.00.
It is not always that the heart travels further than the head,
but there is in the present little volume a distinct advance over
the Thought-Blossoms issued not long ago by the same author.
As before, the quatrains are notably happy, while the devotional
verses are for the most part full of healthy cheer and color. And
in "My Tree of the City Street," the nun-singer gives us real
originality of concept and poignancy of emotion.
THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. By Scott Nearing. New York: The
Rand School of Social Science. $1.00.
The thesis which this latest production of the prolific ex-
Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania seeks
to establish is that America has become a plutocratic world em-
pire. The mass of statistics with which the author supports this
contention is impressive, and perhaps affords sufficient basis for
the prediction that our country might some day become a world
power of this character. Nevertheless, the most important infer-
ences which he draws from his presentation of facts will not be
accepted by many persons outside the ranks of Socialists and
pessimists. For all that, the book is well worth reading.
THE NARROW HOUSE. By Evelyn Scott. New York: Boni &
Liveright. $2.00.
One of the canons of Greek sculpture at its best period was
that things ugly or ignoble should not be portrayed, since such
phases of life are abnormal and transient, therefore should not
be given permanent form. Modern apostles of realism disagree
408 NEW BOOKS [June,
with the ancient Greeks. They assert that ugly things are natural
and permanent, and in the sacred name of truth should be made
the subject of Art with a capital A. (Hence, our present need for
censorship of the movies, etc.) But there is another kind of
realism which finds that
In the mud and scum of things,
Always, always, something sings,
which emphasizes the struggle and aspiration that is part of every
one of us and whose triumph is the normal and natural thing,
and this is the only realism that is true.
Miss Scott is blind to this vision. Her rather tiresome, be-
cause too obviously painstaking, characterization, her keen, un-
sympathetic, and superficial analyses, are of things sordid and
commonplace, and they show her incapable of penetrating to the
true depths of human lives. The Narrow House is a narrow book,
and an unpleasant and false book.
POLITICAL SUMMARY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1920, by
Ernest Fletcher Clymer (New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.00
net), is an extremely handy book because of the concise information
that it contains. It gives a short sketch of the early Government and
the electoral system; a brief biography of the twenty-eight Presidents
from 1789 to 1920; a thumb nail sketch of the political parties and
their origin and the order of their appearance and, finally, a detailed
statement of the electoral votes cast in the presidential elections.
It is a splendid reference book that should prove useful to a great
many people.
WITHIN THE YEAR AFTER, by Betty Adler (Chicago: M. A. Dono-
hue & Co. $2.00), gives the author's impressions of the War
countries shortly after the close of hostilities. She is well qualified for
this work, having been special correspondent of the Lee News Syndi-
cate in France, Belgium, Italy and Germany, and also as the regular
correspondent of the American Commission to negotiate peace in Paris.
She tells a most interesting and delightful story of her experiences
at Versailles, her trip to Chateau Thierry, Belleau Woods and Verdun.
She also gives her impressions of a journey to Egypt and impressions
received while traveling through Belgium.
The book is written in a light narrative form and provides very
pleasant reading. Its value lies in the pictures vividly painted of
conditions that existed at the close of the War.
AMONG ITALIAN PEASANTS, by Tony Cyriax, illustrated by the
author; with an introduction by Muirhead Bone. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $5.00). Since the time of Gray few travelers in
1921.] NEW BOOKS 409
Italy have come home without a lavish praise for its charm. One will
sing the charm of cities, Rome, Florence, Venice; another of Riviera
sunlight, San Remo, Mcntone, Sorrento; another of cathedrals, St.
Peter's, St. Mark's, the temple at Milan. Charm is everywhere choose
what you will. Miss Cyriax finds charm, too, but to many the charm
she finds will not be particularly fascinating. In easy, simple style
she writes an account of a stay among the peasants of northern Italy.
Parts of the book are interesting, to be sure. One likes to see vivid
pictures of home life of any people, no matter what the worldly goods
of the people may total in value. But even vivid pictures may grow
tedious, and Miss Gyriax's book will not grip one who looks for some-
thing rather substantial by way of nourishment to offer one's spirit.
In several of her vignettes of country life there is a certain artistic
finish, but some of them seem to be lacking in soul, and tell us stories
that seem to be not quite told. To reproduce faithfully the profanity
she heard seems to have been one of the author's mild obsessions.
When she wishes us to believe with her that the northern tillers of the
soil have kindly hearts, and offer a welcome to the stranger within the
gates of their villages, we agree with her without reserve.
SATAN'S DIARY, by Leonid Andreleff (New York: Boni & Liveright.
$2.25), is a translation from the Russian. The author died in Eng-
land in 1919 while seeking refuge from Bolshevist opponents. He was
a worker in oil, as well as in ink; one quickly detects the sweep of a
real artist in his words. The Diary is a stinging satire on human life.
Satan, bent on worldly amusement, is depicted as murdering a multi-
millionaire, and at once animates the body with his own evil spirit.
He starts on a tour, reaches Rome, and encounters the mysteriously
misanthropic Mr. Magnus, by whom Satan is outwitted in his own
devilish devices. The spurious virtues, deceptions and hypocrisies
of men and of a young woman, supposedly the daughter of Magnus,
constitute the colors from which the author spreads his pictures.
The atmosphere and the storms of Rome have been put in print.
The calms and the tempests of satanic emotion are portrayed in a real-
istic but, at times, ultra-suggestive manner. There are anti-clerical
thrusts hardly to be pardoned on the ground that they have emanated
from the "father of lies." The overstepping of what is proper extends
even into the department of rhetoric. The leeway of the oxymoron can
scarcely justify a description which involves the wailing of "silent
violins." Although eminently artistic in places, the book is not to be
commended because of its matter and motive.
ORESIDENTS AND PIES: Life in Washington, 1897-1919, by Isabel
1 Anderson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $3.00). In a dozen
chapters of for the most part brightly written narrative, Mrs. Ander-
son tells of life in Washington's inner circles as seen through the eyes
of one who is, presumably, in a position to know. Within the past
several years scenes have shifted somewhat, and the movements and
410 NEW BOOKS [June,
doings of the socially great ones of the earth have paled into relative
insignificance alongside of more focal points in the landscape. On
this account, Mrs. Anderson's book will possess for many but a moder-
ate degree of charm, considered even as entertainment. A good deal
of the detail might have been eliminated with consequent advantage.
One cannot but feel, moreover, that the author's predilections are
not of the inclusive sort that make for wide appeal. They seem char-
acteristic, rather, of the Atlantic seaboard habitant, who is prone to
think of the trans-Allegheny portion of the United States in terms of
hip-boots and luxurious whiskers. To our own way of thinking, the
best part of the book is that which describes Washington in War time.
JUNE ROSES FOR THE SACRED HEART, anonymous (New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 50 cents), is a collection of brief meditations
on various texts of Scripture and assigned to each of the thirty days of
June. To each meditation is appended a hymn or set of verses in
honor of the Sacred Heart. While these meditations are thus assigned
to the month of June they can be used on the First Fridays throughout
the year and, indeed, on any day when one wishes to feed devotion
to the Sacred Heart. It will prove a useful addition to one's library
of devotional books.
HPHE SECOND READER, by James H. Fassett, of "The Corona
1 Readers," is a charming collection of juvenile classics, old and
new, suited to the understanding and enjoyment of children in the
second grade. The editors are to be complimented on their taste in
selection and the publishers on the attractive makeup of this reader
for Catholic children (Ginn & Co. 64 cents.)
ON THE MORALS OF TODAY, by Rev. Thomas Slater, S.J. (New
York: Benziger Brothers. 85 cents). Father Slater's small volume
will be of great value to the Catholic priest in guiding him with
regard to practical instructions to his people. The following subjects
are among those treated in a scholarly manner: The Morality of Anti-
Conceptive Devices; Socialists, Christ and the Church; The Profiteer-
ing Act, 1919; Strike Ethics.
HOPES FOR ENGLISH RELIGION, by J. N. Figgis (New York:
Longmans, Green & Co.). The late John Neville Figgis was a
learned and devout Anglican scholar whose special field of research
was the history of political ideas, and who lectured with distinction
more than once at American universities. This posthumous publication
contains a number of sermons preached in England in War-time on
such subjects as Freedom, Sacramentalism and Humanism. There are,
among others, five sermons on "Our Catholic Inheritance," including
discourses on "Our Debt to Rome," "Our Difference from Rome," and
"Anglican Comprehensiveness." Figgis very much disliked what he
called "papal autocracy" and had a holy horror of the Curia. His
point of view is akin to that of the late Bishop Creighton.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 411
E GENTLE ART OF GOLUMNING, by Charles L. Edson (New
York: Brentano's). In this little treatise on "comic journalism,"
Mr. Edson tells the reader how to become a "compleat colyumist,"
sets forth the fundamental underlying principles of the art, and illus-
trates them with the best examples of the accepted leaders. Mr.
Edson is richly endowed with both wit and humor, and we readily
endorse the statement on the publisher's wrapper: "Ideal reading for
a gloomy night or when you feel blue."
THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS, edited by James L. Hughes (New
York: George H. Doran Co.), is a particularly fine Burns anthol-
ogy in which the poems are arranged on a novel plan. There are
four classes: Poems of Nature; Religious and Ethical Poems; Poems of
Democracy and Brotherhood; Love Songs. Many beautiful photo-
graphic reproductions of scenes in the Burns country greatly enhance
the value of this tasteful selection.
A SYNOPSIS of all the additions contained in the full Roman Missal
/A with a detailed explanation of the Rubrics is published in handy
form by the house of Frederick Pustet. The title is Synopsis Addi-
tionum et Variationum in editione typica Missalis Romani Factarum.
A USEFUL Reference History of the War has been compiled and
written by Irwin Scofield Guernsey, M.A. (New York : Dodd, Mead
& Co.). It is compact and well supplied with illustrations and maps
a convenient volume to have at hand.
WE wish to call to the attention of our readers a new monthly,
published by the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary at Rome. It is called the Commentarium pro Religiosis and
treats (in Latin) of questions of peculiar interest to religious. The
subscription price is $2.50 per annum. The magazine may be ob-
tained from the Missionary Sons of The Immaculate Heart of Mary,
617 South Concha Street, San Antonia, Texas.
THE Ursulines of the Northwest had the happy thought to make
their annual message from Alaska Kahlekat the story of that
wonderful pioneer, Mother Mary Amadeus, of whom the readers of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD have read in the paper, "A Noble Ursuline,"
some months since. The sketch is for private circulation only, but
those are fortunate who will read these fuller details of this remarkable
woman and her great work.
HISTORICAL PAPERS, reprinted from The Journal of the American
Irish Historical Society, vol. xviii., 1919, by Michael J. O'Brien,
contain the following: "How the Descendants of Irish Settlers in
America Were Written into History as 'Anglo-Saxons' and 'Scotch-
Irish;'" "An Authoritative Account of the Earliest Irish Pioneers in
New England;" "Some Traces of the Irish Settlers in the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay;" "Chapter of Irish Charity in Thanksgiving His-
412 NEW BOOKS [June,
tory;" "Early Irish Settlers at Worcester, Mass.;" "Some Irish Names
Gulled from the Official Records of New Hampshire;" "Stray Historical
Items from the Green Mountain State;" "Irish Pioneers in Delaware;"
"Irish Pioneers and Schoolmasters in Butler County, Pennsylvania;"
"Extracts from Virginia Church Records;" "Irish Immigrants from
English Ports in the Eighteenth Century."
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
With a handful of facts from Protestant sources, Rev. Father
Herbert Thurston, S.J., has shattered a good many common delu-
sions about the religious tolerance of the Pilgrims. He does this in the
compass of sixteen pages. (The Pilgrim Fathers, two pence, Catholic
Truth Society, London.)
A close and careful English translation of Pope Benedict's
Encyclical on the Reconciliation of Nations, issued May 23, 1920, has
been put in a convenient pamphlet by The Catholic Truth Society,
London. It is a reprint from the London Tablet. (The Pope's Latest
Message of Peace. Two pence.)
Woman in the Catholic Church is the title of a pamphlet
published by The Catholic Truth Society, London (two pence). It is
a discourse by the Rev. H. F. Hall at Notre Dame Church, Geneva,
on the occasion of the International Congress of Women's Societies,
June, 1920. In twelve pages it gives a compendium of the Church's
view of woman's place in the spiritual economy.
The Road to Damascus (London: The Catholic Truth Society.
Two pence) is the short, simple, interesting story of an Anglican
university man's journey Romeward. The writer, whose identity is
veiled under the initials "W. A. D.," draws a humble parallel between
his spiritual career and that of St. Paul from the feet of Gamaliel to
Damascus. Rev. Father C. C. Martindale, to whom "W. A. D." appealed
for guidance at one stage of the journey, furnishes a foreword.
The Three Sisters of Charity Martyred at Arras in 1794, by
Alice, Lady Lovat (London: The Catholic Truth Society. One
shilling, recounts the glorious death of three religious who have
since been beatified (June 13, 1920). The chronicle which Lady Lovat
has supplied is remindful of the histories of the first Christian martyrs,
who paid with their lives for their refusal to burn incense to Rome's
pagan deities, as these holy nuns won death by their refusal to vow
allegiance to the atheistic tyranny that ruled France in 1794.
IRecent Events.
On May 10th the Reichstag, by a majority
Germany. vote, endorsed the decision of the new
Cabinet, formed earlier on the same day by
Dr. Julius Wirth, to accede to Allied demands for payment of a
war bill of $33,750,000,000, the trial of war criminals, and com-
plete disarmament of Germany. This action was the culmination
of a series of events, which included an exchange of notes in
April between Germany and the United States, in an endeavor by
the former to win more favorable terms, the issue of an Allied
ultimatum threatening seizure of the whole Ruhr Valley, the fall
of the Fehrenbach ministry on May 4th, and vain attempts for
several days to form a new cabinet.
The Ministry finally formed by Dr. Wirth, who is the leader
of the Centre Party, is a coalition representing the Democratic,
Centrist and Majority Socialist parties. These parties have two
hundred and twenty-two votes out of a total of four hundred and
sixty votes in the Reichstag, and this, with the eighty votes of the
Independent Socialists, who also are in favor of yielding to the
Allied ultimatum, gives the new Government a safe majority in
support of its leading policy.
The Allied terms, which had been agreed on at a London con-
ference between Premiers Lloyd George and Briand, were as fol-
lows: Complete disarmament of Germany's military, naval, and
aerial forces as called for by the Treaty of Versailles; trial by the
High Court at Leipsic of the persons accused by the Entente of
violations of the laws of war; payment within twenty-five days to
the Allies of the 1,000,000,000 gold marks due May 1, 1921, under
the terms of the Versailles Treaty; and payment of $487,000,000
annually to the Allies, in addition to a sum equal to twenty-five
per cent, of the value of Germany's exports, until a total of
$33,750,000,000 shall have been paid. In recognition of this total
debt, Germany is required to issue bonds bearing five per cent,
interest, which are to be issued from time to time, some by July
1st, some in November, and others as the Reparations Commis-
sion directs.
In accordance with the Reichstag resolution, a note was dis-
patched by the German Government to all the Allied capitals un-
conditionally accepting the terms laid down. The text of this note
followed the phraseology of the Allied ultimatum, which called
414 RECENT EVENTS [June,
lil ;(::.
for the carrying out of the various demands "without reserve or
delay." The Allies had made full preparations for the invasion
of the Ruhr Valley in case the Berlin Government did not agree to
the Entente terms before midnight, May 12th; and this threat is
considered the prime cause of the German Government's complete
surrender.
On receipt of the German note, General Degoutte, Commander
of the Allied forces on the Rhine, immediately ordered prepara-
tions for the Ruhr occupation to cease. Some difference of
opinion, however, exists between the French and British Govern-
ments as to the policy now to be pursued, the British Government
being apparently in favor of the immediate withdrawal of the
Allied troops from Duesseldorf, Duisburg and Ruhrort and the
suppression of the Rhine customs barrier, whereas the French
contend that these cities were occupied because Germany had not
fulfilled the terms of the Treaty, that she has now merely prom-
ised to fulfill the terms, and that the occupation should continue
till she has actually fulfilled them.
In Paris the crucial test in the situation is regarded as likely
to come on June 30th, with the expiration of the time limit for the
complete disarmament of Germany. If the Allied conditions are
not complied with by that date, it is declared in official circles,
the Ruhr will be occupied, even if Germany pays the 1,000,000,000
gold marks within a month, as provided in the Reparations Com-
mission's schedule.
An even more serious rift in Entente unity is threatened by
recent developments in Silesia. Early in May organized Polish
forces, estimated at 20,000, which have since grown to 50,000, oc-
cupied all of Upper Silesia south of a line running from Kosel to
Tarnowitz, with the exception of a few large towns. This action
followed the rumor that the Inter-Allied Commission were to
recommend to the Supreme Council the giving to Germany of all
the plebiscite area except the districts of Rybnik and Pless.
Armed clashes immediately occurred between the insurgent Poles
and various forces of the Allies, resulting in numerous casualties.
Adalbert Korfanty, who had been the Polish plebiscite commis-
sioner and was dismissed by the Polish Government when the dis-
orders began, openly announced that he was leading the revolt,
and assumed a virtual dictatorship. The Polish Government dis-
claims all knowledge of Korfanty's programme, and states that
it is not in communication with him or his aids.
After a ten-day advance, in which the Poles successively
fought French, British, Italian and, finally, German troops, and
overran nearly the whole industrial area under dispute in the face
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 415
of insistent Allied demands that the Poles lay down their arms,
the Polish Premier, Witos, announced in the Diet on May llth
that an agreement for the suspension of hostilities had been
reached between Korfanty and the Inter-Allied Commission in
Silesia. It was agreed, according to report, that the insurgents
would occupy a line of demarcation settled upon and remain in
the stipulated positions pending final settlement of the Upper
Silesian question.
Serious differences of opinion over the Silesian situation have
broken out between the French on one side, and the British and
Italians on the other. The British insist that the Poles must lay
down their arms in the disputed territory and that, if they do not,
Germany should be allowed to send into Silesia armed forces to
help put down the revolt, the British position being based on the
principle that if Germany complies with the Treaty of Versailles,
as she has just agreed to do, she is entitled to see that the Poles be
prevented also from frustrating the Treaty. To any use of Ger-
man troops in Silesia as elsewhere, the French have declared
themselves as unalterably opposed. Meanwhile, despite the re-
port of an armistice, fighting is continuing in three places at
Rosenberg, Kosel and Ratibor. Altogether, the situation is con-
sidered very delicate and fraught with danger to European peace.
Nine hundred Germans, whose punishment has been de-
manded by the Entente for crimes committed during the War,
will face trial at Leipsic, beginning May 23d. Seven judges will
sit as the court, and will first hear witnesses against minor of-
fenders on a supplemental list. Forty-seven witnesses have been
called from England to testify in the first three cases. Only men
charged with the commission of specific crimes will be tried at
first. The British, French and Belgian Governments will have
representatives at the trials, but Germans will conduct the prose-
cution and the defence. The preliminary trials will be taken as
a test of the good faith of the German Government in promising
to bring to justice those accused of War atrocities. In all, the
Allies have put forward the names of forty-five violators of the
rules of modern warfare.
At a plebiscite, held in the Austrian Tyrol on April 24th,
nearly ninety-eight per cent, of the inhabitants of the province
voted in favor of fusion with Germany. The vote, however, was
merely a "sentimental plebiscite" and has no practical validity.
Earlier in the month a great demonstration was held in Vienna,
where thousands of burghers of all political parties marched along
the boulevards demonstrating for union with Germany, and pro-
testing against the prohibition by the Entente of the popular
416 RECENT EVENTS [June,
movement toward union. A resolution in favor of the union and
upholding the right of self-determination was presented by a dele-
gation to Chancellor Mayr. Similar demonstrations were made at
Innsbruck and Salzburg.
The latest development in the controversy which has been
going on for several months with the Allies over the Orgesh or
Bavarian civilian guards, is the report that Bavaria will initiate
negotiations direct with France regarding the question. This step,
according to the report, will be undertaken by Bavaria with the
consent of the Federal Government of Germany. It is asserted
Bavaria will give guarantees whereby her militia forces will be
placed under the control of French authorities.
Book production in Germany is almost back to its pre-War
figure, the output for 1920, according to official data, having been
34,000, including 6,227 new editions. The highest mark in book
production was reached in Germany in 1914, when 35,000 books
were published. The output in 1915 was 28,000; in 1910, 22,000;
in 1917, 14,824; in 1918, 14,513, and 1919, 23,320. Last year
showed a big increase in the number of books of history, geog-
raphy and art, and also in juvenile works, while there was a de-
crease in the books on military science. The figures on last year's
output furnish a surprise in view of the complaint about the
exorbitant cost of paper, the high wages and short hours, and
other economic handicaps.
Outside the Allied decisions with regard to
France. Germany, the most important item of the
month's news from France concerned the
position of the United States Government towards European af-
fairs. On May 4th the Allied Supreme Council adopted a formal
motion requesting the United States to send representatives to
assist in all future negotiations with Germany, and in the settle-
ment of all matters in connection with the Treaty of Versailles,
and on May 6th Secretary of State Hughes responded in a note
agreeing to the proposal. George Harvey, American Ambassador
to Great Britain, has been instructed to assume the functions of
representative of President Harding on the Supreme Council,
Ambassador Wallace, in Paris, has resumed his duties on the
Council of Ambassadors, and will so continue till Myron T. Her-
rick, his successor as Ambassador to France, arrives; while
Roland W. Boyden, who was the American unofficial observer on
the Reparations Commission until a few days before President
Harding took office, has again taken his seat on that Commission.
One of America's first acts on the Supreme Council, it has
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 417
been authoritatively announced, will be to bring up the question
of universal disarmament, as President Harding believes that con-
ferences inside the Supreme Council may be turned in that direc-
tion and will be more helpful than any general discussion else-
where could be. Another result of America's participation in
Allied Councils will be the reopening of various questions pre-
viously decided, particularly those having to do with the man-
dates in Yap and Mesopotamia, on which the American Govern-
ment protested last month. Since the sending of the protest both
Italy and France have aligned themselves with America on the
proposal of equality in mandate territories. In resuming active
participation in the Allied Councils, great care has been taken to
make clear that the American Government considers neither the
Supreme Council nor the Council of Ambassadors as creatures of
the League of Nations, membership in which the American Gov-
ernment declines.
During the month a number of important decisions and
recommendations were made by various committees of the League
of Nations. The chief of these was the matter of Austrian relief,
which the Financial Commission of the League has been study-
ing for some time. The plan proposed for Austria's rehabilita-
tion amounts to a virtual receivership by the Financial Commis-
sion of the League. The receivership, if approved, as seems likely,
will rest with the group of international financial experts who
worked out the scheme, and in such capacity these men will be
practically in charge of the Government of Austria on behalf of
the League of Nations. The basic idea of the scheme is a sus-
pension of the liens on Austrian Government resources held by
the Allied nations, in order that the assets thus made temporarily
available may be used as securities for credits and applied to a
resuscitation of the almost extinguished industries of Austria.
This part of the plan has already been approved by the four great
Allied powers, and similar action is expected of various other Gov-
ernments interested in the Treaty of St. Germain.
In reply to the Commission's plan, the Austrian Government
makes its acceptance conditional upon the assurance of a definite
amount of credits. It proposes to add the tobacco monopoly and
certain custom duties to land mortgages as a guaranty for credits.
The Government insists that food credits and the establishment of
a bank of issue are necessary before the internal sources of
revenue can be opened. It is reported that the proposed new
currency will not be the crown, but the franc or the gulden.
At present the Financial Commission has in Austria a special
committee to collect all the information needed for prompt action.
VOL. cxni. 27
418 RECENT EVENTS [June,
The Commission is to meet in London on May 20th to exam-
ine the report of this committee, and by that time it is hoped the
Commission will have received the reply of the Allied and other
Governments to its letter relative to the plan for Austria's financial
restoration.
The Commission appointed by the League to examine the
status of the Aland Islands in the Baltic and determine whether
they should belong to Finland or to Sweden, recently issued a
voluminous report, which may be summarized as a recommenda-
tion of home rule for the islands under Finnish protection and
suzerainty.
On May 10th the Secretariat of the League received a tele-
gram from Brussels announcing that the Polish and Lithuanian
delegations had resumed their negotiations, and had agreed to
examine together the best means for reaching a settlement regard-
ing the foreign policies of the two countries, the organization of a
common defence and a plan covering economic conditions. The
economic question was first taken up and, after an exchange of
views, the two delegations decided to confide the study of the
different points to experts, and jointly resolved that it is essential
to the interests of both countries to reestablish consular relations
at the earliest possible moment.
The Brazilian Ambassador at Paris, Senor Gastoa da Cunba,
Acting President of the Council of the League of Nations, on May
3d summoned the Governments of the Powers belonging to the
League to send delegates to the second session of the League to
be opened at Geneva on Monday, September 5th. This summons
is accompanied by a provisional agenda containing twenty-five
items which include fifteen different reports, mainly upon ques-
tions which have been made the subjects of special investigation
by commissions appointed by the League Assembly last autumn.
Among these subjects are armament reduction, communication
and transit, the traffic in opium, the traffic in women and chil-
dren, the typhus campaign, international health organization and
international coordination of intellectual work. Another item on
the agenda is the election of judges to the Permanent Court of
International Justice, which cannot be done unless a majority of
the League members have ratified the protocol concerning the
court before next September.
The French Government on April 30th announced that after
May 1st premium will be paid on all children born throughout
France. In the provinces three hundred francs (normally about
sixty dollars) will be paid for third infants, the scale being grad-
ually increased to six hundred and fifty francs for the tenth child.
1921.] RECENT EVENTS
419
In Paris these premiums will be increased fifty per cent, due to
the higher cost of living. A first payment of one hundred and
fifty francs will be made thirty days after the birth of the child.
Only French mothers will be eligible to receive the awards.
According to figures recently made public by the Ministry of
Finance, the internal revenue yield for April totaled 1,248,000,000
francs. This was an increase of eighteen per cent, over the same
month in 1920, but 86,000,000 francs under the estimate, the dis-
appointing return in the tax on the business turnover accounting
for 83,000,000 francs of this sum. Registration duties exceeded
the estimate by 85,000,000 francs, but the customs yield was fifty
per cent, below the receipts in April, 1920. The decrease was due
to lighter imports of coffee, cereals, wines, textiles, cotton, metals
and sugar. The income tax yielded 152,000,000 francs and the
War profits tax 415,000,000 francs.
The population of Paris, as returned by the census taken on
March 6th, was 2,863,741. The figures, which are definitive, show
an increase since 1911 of only 16,512 persons. In the centre of the
city the number of residents has decreased by more than 32,000
as the result of the taking over of former dwellings by business
firms.
Because of the dangerous situation created in the region of
Constantinople by the army of Baron Wrangel, the former anti-
Bolshevik leader, the French Government has issued a note dis-
avowing General Wrangel completely, and declaring that she will
give no further aid to the Crimean refugees. The note declares
that Wrangel has formed a sort of government at Constantinople
and "opposes all measures taken by the French military author-
ities to end the expenses undertaken for motives of pure human-
ity." To date the French Government has expended 200,000,000
francs in the evacuation of the Crimea and relief of the refugees.
It is intimated that Wrangel is on the verge of a coup d'dtat,
which might possibly include the seizure of Constantinople, with
consequent complications for the Allies of a serious nature. The
French note states that it is essential to remove the Crimean
refugees from Wrangel's influence, and while putting no con-
straint on him or his officers, it is indispensable to break their
contact with the soldiers in the camps of Gallipoli and Lemnos.
Considerable disorder occurred in Paris and in other places
on May 8th during the celebration of the lifting of the siege of
Orleans by Joan of Arc in 1429. Fourteen policemen and twenty-
three Communists were wounded, and many arrests were made
when Communists tried to enter the gates of Paris in protest
against the celebration. The disorder continued for several hours,
420 RECENT EVENTS [June,
during which time there was considerable shooting and the hurl-
ing of missiles from the walls of the fortifications. Disturbances
also took place at Brest, St. Etienne, and Limoges.
That the March revolt against the Soviet
Russia. Government of Russia was materially re-
duced in extent through the timely arrest
of Menshevik leaders in Moscow, Petrograd and other cities would
seem to be indicated by a report recently issued by the Foreign
Delegation of the Social Democratic Labor Party of Russia (the
Mensheviki). Although the Mensheviki have apparently aban-
doned the idea of overthrowing the Soviet Government by violence,
they have, nevertheless, succeeded in forcing numerous conces-
sions from Nikolai Lenine, and other Bolshevik chiefs. One of
these concessions is a decree recently issued by Lenine giving the
trades unions, instead of the Government, the right to fix the pay
of workmen. In addition, free trade has been restored to cooper-
ative societies, and a system of taxation in kind established.
The final admission by the Soviet Government of the impos-
sibility of the original Communistic theories, however, is afforded
by the recent authorization of the coinage of silver, the Bolshe-
viki by this measure completely reversing their position after
having held out for a long time for a complete abolition of money.
This was due to the desire of the Government to satisfy the peas-
ants, whose ascendancy in Russian affairs is daily becoming in-
creasingly evident and who, for a considerable time, have been
distrustful of the flood of paper money pouring from the Govern-
ment presses. Moreover, the Moscow newspaper, Economic Life.
has been permitted to print a lengthy article advocating the
restoration of the savings banks in Russia, and even the payment
of interest in connection with the proposed new coinage of silver.
The text of two speeches recently delivered by Lenine one
before the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party and the other
before the railwaymen's conference at Moscow have lately
reached this country, and indicate a growing desire on the part
of the Soviet leader for an agreement with the peasants, who are
admitted to be dissatisfied with the economic reforms of Bolshe-
vism, "by the renunciation of certain theoretical precepts."
Despite necessary concessions, however, it is clear from these
speeches that the Soviet Government will continue to operate the
main Russian industries and Russia's transport system on Com-
munistic principles.
Ratification of the Treaty between Poland, Soviet Russia and
RECENT EVENTS 421
the Ukraine was voted on April 16th by the Polish Diet. This
action completes Poland's engagement to have the convention ap-
proved within thirty days after the compact was signed on March
18th. The Bolshevik Government ratified the Treaty on March
22d, but similar action on the part of Ukrainia has not as yet
been reported. Under the terms of the convention as now pub-
lished, Soviet Russia ceded to Poland three thousand square kilo-
metres near Minsk, and Russia and Ukrainia turned over to Po-
land the district of Polesia, on the Ukrainian frontier. In addi-
tion, Poland is to receive 30,000,000 gold rubles within one year
after ratification of the Treaty, and a release from any share of the
debts of the former Russian Empire. It is announced that the
negotiation of a commercial agreement between Poland and Soviet
Russia will be begun shortly. Meanwhile, thirty Soviet officials
making up the reparation commission which will attend to the
details of the exchange of 100,000 Russian prisoners and refugees
now in Poland, are at present in that country. Six members of
the commission are women.
Late in April the Soviet Government concluded a commercial
treaty with Germany. This agreement provides for a number of
consulates in Russia, to which mercantile departments will be at-
tached, and which will be permitted direct wireless communication
with Berlin. Russia assures all German immigrants and other
visitors that their persons and property will be absolutely secure,
as well as any property or other possessions acquired in Russia.
Commercial dealings, however, can only be made through the
official German consular representatives referred to above with
the Russian authorities commissioned to deal with foreigners.
All sales purchased by Germans in Russia must be recorded in
Moscow. Since the agreement was signed Soviet Russia is re-
ported to have ordered more than six hundred locomotives from
German firms.
The Soviet Government is negotiating for trade relations also
with Norway, Sweden, and Czecho-Slovakia, and with apparent
prospects of success. On the other hand, no dealings of any sort
with the Soviet Government will be undertaken by the Govern-
ment of the United States until all American citizens held as
prisoners, hostages or restraint of any kind are permitted to leave
the country. The use Lenine had hoped to make of the Americans
held in Russia to force formal negotiations with the United States
in such a manner as to constitute recognition of his regime, is well
understood by American officials, and according to authoritative
information there is not the slightest likelihood of the success of
the manoeuvre. A report from Russian sources that the British
422 RECENT EVENTS [June,
Government has given de facto recognition to the Soviet Govern-
ment lacks confirmation.
A recent Moscow dispatch announces the quelling of the
revolutionary movement in the Province of Tambov, led by Gen-
eral Antonoff, a former Bolshevik commander, which has been
reported in progress for nearly two months past. This revolt was
organized on lines similar to those of the Cronstadt rebellion
which was suppressed by the Bolsheviki in March.
On the other hand an extensive revolution is reported in
progress in Western Siberia, where the peasants, even in the mo'st
remote districts, have armed against the Bolsheviki. The Soviet
Government has ordered a strong force of troops and several
armored trains to Siberia. The peasants are commanded by
former officers of Kolchak's army, and decisive battles are ex-
pected at the beginning of summer.
An official declaration by the White Russian Government of
the independence of White Russia as a White Russian-Jewish
state has been published. The sovereignty of both the White
Russian and Jewish nationalities is to be recognized, according
to the declaration. The name of White Russia was given to the
government of Mohileo and Vitebsk by Catherine II., but the po-
litical designation was abolished by Nicholas I. In general, it is
the district bounded by Ukrainia, Poland, the Baltic provinces and
great Russia. It has about 6,000,000 inhabitants. A republic was
proclaimed there in May, 1918.
As these notes are being prepared, on May
Italy. 15th, Italy is holding the most important
general election since the Unification. The
number of Deputies will be raised from five hundred and eight to
five hundred and thirty-five on account of the twenty-seven new
constituencies of the Liberated Provinces. The indications point
to the victory of Giolitti and the defeat of the Socialists, Commun-
ists and the People's (or Catholic) Party, as a split has developed
in the Catholic, as well as the Socialist Party. What is considered
another hopeful outlook for the Giolitti Government is that in
thirty-four out of forty provinces local animosities have abated,
thus allowing the formation of joint lists with a view to defeating
the Bolshevik element. To this end in several large towns, the
Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, and even, occasionally, mild So-
cialists have joined forces. The new element in the contest will
be the .Fascisti, who, though not as much feared as the Com-
munists, are not supposed to favor Giolitti's Government.
With the approach of the elections, clashes between the Fas-
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 423
cisti and the Socialists have become more frequent and sanguin-
ary. On one day alone the reports of widespread violence showed
a total of six dead and forty wounded. Conflicts between the two
factions raged with more or less violence in nearly all sections of
the country throughout the month, with the population almost
always siding with the Fascisti. To date, the Fascisti, in reprisal,
have destroyed two hundred labor bureaus and printing houses
where subversive newspapers and literature were published. On
April 27th the palatial headquarters of the Turin Federation of
Labor, estimated to be worth more than $1,000,000, was set on fire
and totally destroyed as a reprisal for the killing of a member of
the Fascisti the previous night. As a result of the burning a
general strike, with a partial stoppage of railway traffic and the
suppression of daily newspapers, broke out in Turin on the fol-
lowing day.
The Fascisti movement seems to be gaining ground in every
Italian town and village. It is organized on strictly military
lines, their leaders consisting of former officers who fought in the
Great War, their Supreme Chief being General Capello, the hero
of Gorizia. Their programme in the present political campaign is
three-fold: "First, to free the country from her internal enemies
and protect her from foreign ones; second, to restore the author-
ity of the State; third, to force the resumption of work in all
fields in order to restore the economic and financial equilibrium
of Italy. As their chief object is to fight Socialism, Communism
and anarchism, they stand alone politically in those constituen-
cies in which they are strong enough, or as in Rome, they join
one or more of the constitutional parties which have in common
with them all or part of their programme."
Much disorder marked the elections held in Fiume on April
26th, in which the Autonomists, under the leadership of the So-
cialist, Ricardo Zanella, who had been banished by d'Annunzio,
were victorious by more than one thousand votes. In the riots
immediately following the ballotting, the ballot boxes were burned
and two persons were killed and a score wounded. The victory
of Zanella was considered by his followers a protest of the in-
habitants against the d'Annunzio regime. Two days later, how-
ever, a body of Fascisti from Trieste, former supporters of d'An-
nunzio, invaded Fiume in motor cars, took possession of the city
and proclaimed a new regency under Ricardo Gigante, former
Mayor of Fiume during its control by d'Annunzio. The elections
of the previous Sunday were declared canceled. On the following
day the Fascisti were compelled to give way owing to the calling
of a general strike and the opposition of the Italian Government.
424 RECENT EVENTS [June,
Signer Gigante consented to leave Fiume and turned over the gov-
ernment to the old Provisional Government, headed by former
Mayor Bellasich, who was at once recognized by the Italian Gov-
ernment as the legal head of Fiume. Signor Gigante, before hand-
ing over authority to Signor Bellasich, who has been designated
Commissioner Extraordinary, issued a proclamation in which he
declared that Fiume should be annexed to Italy and the Treaty
of Rapallo repealed. It is expected that an attempt will be made
to force the new Italian Parliament to repeal the Treaty by
holding Fiume through force of arms.
Despite the apparent disturbed state of the country, Premier
Giolitti, in an interview on the eve of the election, declared that
Italy, "by pure plodding and striving, has reached a point where
she can lift her head and look into the future with a sterner faith
in her own resourcefulness." According to the Premier's state-
ment, although Italy has been taxed almost to the breaking point
out of the estimated national income of $3,000,000 the Govern-
ment exacts taxes totalling $1,200,000 nevertheless, she is recov-
ering from the War and is once more firmly on her feet.
Despite the Premier's optimism, many industries in Italy
have recently been reported as being in severe straits because of
the poor exchange rates and the collapse of markets. The metal-
lurgical factories have reached the verge of ruin and other enter-
prises are suffering. All the steel works in Italy are working on
a half-time basis and most of the blast furnaces are idle. The
automobile and mechanical trades are running better than the
metal factories, although many of these also are on half-time, and
reports are frequent of liquidations forced by the unfavorable
situation.
On April 18th the United States Secretary of the Treasury
made an advance to Italy of $16,000,000 under loan commitments
previously authorized. While this was the first foreign loan
transaction since last September, there was no actual transfer of
cash, arrangements having been made some months ago whereby
this amount would be advanced to Italy for payment to Great
Britain, who returned it to this country for the account of France.
May 15, 1921.
With Our Readers.
IN a smoking car conversation rather above the ordinary one
of the company asked leave to read aloud from a book he held
in his hand. With full permission, he proceeded. What he read
was Sidney Lanier's rhapsody to the sun. The reader was enthu-
siastic: he loved the passage. Evidently, it had long been to him
a personal delight: a guide, an inspiration and a light to better
thoughts, higher resolutions and a kindlier spirit towards crea-
tion and towards his fellowman.
All of his auditors agreed with regard to its beauty and its
power, and their short phrases of approval signified also a measure
of gratitude. We say all: but there was one exception. He was
evidently an intelligent man, something of a scholar: well-bred.
His exception was not rudely offered. He gave it with the reti-
cence of that consideration which hesitates to offend or to dis-
appoint. "It's well put," he began. "But isn't truth our first
responsibility and our only safe guide? We ought not to deceive
ourselves, much as we may like to. Nature gives and can give
no more than she has. The sun is really but a huge mass of
molten metal. It has no beauty; just an immense furnace. Your
poet has imaginatively misrepresented, I may say distorted, a
purely chemical process, the effect of heat upon the forces brought
within its reach. All of them can be explained by physical laws
and by physical science. We are not justified in going beyond
either. And it would be best in this practical world to walk by
the light of the knowledge we have, rather than, forgetting it, to
substitute our own dreams and unrealities however poetic they
may be."
The reader, with a wondering, but not a worried, look, closed
his volume and was silent. So were we all.
The reader and the critic differed absolutely in their funda-
mental point of view: their attitude: their spirit: their estimate of
the personal value of life and the worth of character. Which
would help to make this a better world?
* * * *
DURING the recent War a book, entitled Under Fire, by Henri
Barbusse, achieved great fame: was widely read, and played
an effective part in molding the opinion of many, not only with
regard to the character and motives of the French soldiers, but
with regard to the merits of the entire War, the worth of the
426 WITH OUR READERS [June,
holocausts of human victims offered in those years. The book
was depressing, decadent. It betrayed hopelessness, and it de-
fended it. No man could rise up from reading it with any cour-
age save that of despair: with any fraternal love save that of
toleration.
* * * ' *
RECENTLY there was published the following poem on the
same subject as that treated in Under Fire the Poilu:
"You never can tell," said the Captain,
"What a blooming Frenchyll do!
Colonials fight like hell for the right
(The same as I and you),
And a Tommy is always grouchy,
And a Kiltie is always blue;
But nobody knows of the wind that blows,
Or the bird they call poilu!
"There's a Christ at every crossroads
In France," the Captain said,
"Battered and shattered by shrapnel,
Minus an arm or head,
There's a Christ or a Virgin Mary
Painted in blue and red.
They gave godspeed to the living,
And they give good sleep to the dead!
"We always saluted a wayside shrine
When the company passed it by;
And once, on the eve of battle,
While the gun-glare lit the sky,
And the shells were singing over,
We came to a cross nailed high
And a Christ with a poilu's helmet
Cocked rakishly over an eye!
"I've never been overly pious,
But I wheeled my horse right there,
And rode to the cross, and, standing
In my stirrups, reached in air,
When a voice in the column shouted:
'Oh, Captain! Leave it there!
'Twas a lad climbed up and left his own,
For the Saviour's head was bare!'
"We charged from the front line trenches
At dawn," the Captain said,
"And I woke, when night had fallen,
In a little white hospital bed.
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 427
On the cot next to mine was moaning
A boy with a bandaged head.
He cried to his mother and Jesus Christ,
In French and then was dead!
"'Twas the lad who gave his helmet
(And his life as each man knew!)
To shield the head of the Saviour,
Painted in red and blue.
He had laughed at the sleet of shrapnel
As he laughed at the hat askew!
So you never can tell," said the Captain,
"What a Frenchman's apt to do!"
Kadra Maysi.
This is but a short poem. The book contains over two mil-
lion words. But which speaks the more hopeful, the more needed
message to humankind?
* * * *
IT may be said, after the way of many moderns, that there is
something of truth in both attitudes. But, first of all, they are
more than attitudes: they are basic, spiritual foundations. And
while we may and should check and sober our imaginative en-
thusiasm by reasonable fact, it is undoubtedly true that if we
wish really to live and to achieve, we must build on the philos-
ophy of the reader and the poet. That alone leads to progress,
to achievement, to victory. The philosophy of the critic and the
author we have mentioned leads to depression, to materialism,
and to death.
* * * *
PR even if a man confine his view to the material universe
to what he can see by his eyes and touch with his hands, yet
must he of necessity pass beyond the material into the spiritual.
Even with him there must be a spirit and a life. He will speak at
once of the uniformity of nature's laws: of cause and effect: he
will predicate at once his general principles underlying the uni-
verse he studies. He will have to accept, as Huxley said, spiritual
law or laws which he cannot prove by material experiment or by
natural argument granting that there could be such a self-con-
tradictory process. And recognizing material order, he will speak
of the right life, the right spirit of the material universe. Nature
will have its spirit, inevitably involved with the interpretation of
the spirit of man. Nature will serve. And it will serve according
to the spirit which the individual brings to it. To him who has
spelled into self, hopelessness; an infinitesimal chemical part of a
chemical universe, nature will be a meaningless, ruthless, destroy-
428 WITH OUR READERS [June,
ing tyrant. To him who sees self as an intelligent moral person,
created by and destined for the God Who has sent His Spirit
through all the universe, nature will be the many tongued mes-
senger of His glory.
Nature dies not, neither will he. Nature renews its life, so
will his life be renewed. Nature knows no loss : neither will man
in any of the powers, the gifts that have contributed to his man-
hood. Nature is fitted, ordered in yearly response to the spirit
of life, of achievement, of fulfillment, so will that same spirit of
life dwell within man, sustain and perfect him in line with his
powers of intelligence and will, make eternally enduring that
which every one of us knows as a hope, even though we at times
crush it and deny it,
* * * *
UNLESS the knowledge of hope inform every part of our life
and the whole of life itself, then are we but weary workers
in a lost cause. The knowledge of hope. Hope is not built on
imagination: but on reality. Hope is built upon what we may
call the revelations of nature, which in turn are confirmed and
securely sealed by the revelations of Christ. The revelations of
nature are those first truths which cannot be demonstrated be-
cause to demonstrate them means to pre-suppose them. And it is
a noteworthy fact that nature's revelation is not preserved nor its
value maintained among men unless divine revelation be treas-
ured also. That is why the intelligent knowledge of our Faith is
so supremely necessary, not only as we often think for the imme-
diate religious values and concerns of life but for every depart-
ment of life itself.
For with that knowledge comes the Spirit which, given unto
man, permits him to see that order, the order of personal Wisdom,
reaches through all things, from end to end, mightily and orders
all things sweetly. The very fact that the individual man must
always think as "I" means that he reduces all things to unity.
If he cannot coordinate himself with the order of the entire uni-
verse he is bewildered. He may behold order and purpose in parts
of it; in some departments of human activity and human progress,
but unless by an all-embracing truth he can explain this order
with regard to himself and himself with regard to this order, he
loses himself. What truth he knows becomes distorted, mis-
shapen, unbalanced. Failure, misery, death are all personal equa-
tions, and it is vain to tell any man that there is order elsewhere,
if he knows no order, or hope, or purpose in himself. The spirit
that bids him hope must be also the spirit of life. Revelation con-
firms nature and nature is the foreshadowing of God's relations
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 429
with man, even as it is His handiwork. And as He made man per-
sonal, intelligent, responsible so will He give to man the Spirit
that is also personal, the Spirit that will guide the mind and the
will into the ways of His hope and His life.
* * * *
nnO see more clearly the vital importance of this, consider for a
* moment the man who gives himself to the study of one part
or one phase of the universe or its life. It quickly absorbs all his
attention and his obedience. He makes that part the centre of
the universe. Its laws become the laws of all else of explana-
tion, of interpretation, of progress, of life. Science is not imper-
sonal. Unless man keep the delicate balance of his freedom,
science will make him as slavish and as blind as any moral
passion. Looking constantly at one truth he will see no other.
In his forgetfulness he will deny to other truths the value that
they also equally possess. "Seeing he will not see, and hearing
he will not understand." "He that hath to him shall be given,
but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away that also
which he hath."
* * * *
RECENTLY a noted biologist has written a paper, which is
hopeful and which is also very pitiful. He is attempting to
show that there is some other view of life than the merely phys-
ical, chemical or mechanistic conception of life. And what is his
argument?
"If I myself am not yet convinced that all of humanism is
to be dumped, together with all the rest of nature, into the com-
mon pot of chemicalism, it is chiefly due to my wife and child.
Not that I cannot recognize in them the presence of bodies com-
posed of engines, and of living tissues and organs composed of
substances, mostly very complex, but at bottom made up of the
same chemical elements that make up the less complex sub-
stances of non-living matter; nor that I cannot perceive in them
the results of the influences of the biological laws that I find also
in the various lower forms of life. But I find more in them; so
much more, indeed, that, although my scientific training and
knowledge urge me to look on this more as only quantitatively
more, my common sense and general experience, to say nothing of
my recognition of the limitations of scientific knowledge, compel
me to see in them the manifestations of natural possibilities so
far removed from, or in advance of, those manifestations as re-
vealed in non-living matter or in the whole range of the rest of
the world of life, that, for all practical purposes, these two human
430 WITH OUR READERS [June,
beings, and hence all others, must be looked on as possessed of
at least some qualities and capacities essentially different from
those found anywhere else in nature."
This is hopeful, yet is it not also pitiful? Is this the reach of
modern secular science? Is the approach of so many to religion,
that is to a "whole" view of life, still so far distant?
N TOT through the uncertain by-ways of scientific thought need
1 ^ the soul find its way to God. Left to them, man would, and
does, send forth the same cry today as his fellows equally learned,
equally scientific of two thousand years ago, for a Saviour, a
Redeemer, a Teacher : for a Truth that would guide them through
earth to heaven. Our hopes, our aspirations, our loves, are not
in vain. The Catholic Church has kept for us, has given us the
Faith of God. In His humanity, and His divinity Christ reigns
upon our altars. We receive Him, our Truth. He is the witness
and the seal of the first things and of the last. To an insecure
world He is the security of Truth. And He has sent His Spirit,
Who will not only teach us all truth but Who will conform us to
Christ's own image, for we have salvation only in Him. And the
Spirit dwells in each one of us, the Spirit of Life, moving us,
directing us, sustaining us to that victory which explains sin and
suffering and separation and death.
/CATHOLICS especially those who have lived in Catholic coun-
^ tries know with understanding sympathy the indispensable
role of the church bell in village life. It is time-keeper, chron-
icler, monitor: it marks the hours' flight into eternity, links the
homely fact of birth and death, with Him from Whom we come,
to Whom we go, calls to the daily present Sacrifice of salvation,
and thrice lifts "earth to Heaven" in its song of Heaven's stoop to
earth.
Silence hangs heavy over devastated France. To reconstruct
French life without the church bell is recognized as a hopeless
task. Hence, the appeal of the American Committee for Devas-
tated France, 16 East Thirty-ninth Street, New York, for the
"Angelus Fund," as it is most appropriately called. One hundred
(100) bells are needed at the approximate cost of $100. It is a
beautiful thought this, to make France vocal again with the
joyous call to prayer in memory of our soldier dead.
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 431
" A ROMAN P riest black as the top of a stove, drove down the
* jetty toward them.
' 'You you!' he shouted to the cripple when he was yet ten
strides away. His voice rose as he approached. 'You let the
m'sieu' row you ashore ! You ' A square, heavy boot shot out
from beneath his cassock into the boy's stomach.
" 'Cochon!' said the priest, turning to Simpson. His manner
became suddenly suave, grandiose. These swine!' he said. 'One
keeps them in their place. I am Father Antoine. And you?' "
This paragraph is the introduction to the Catholic Church in
Hayti, furnished by a writer in Scribner's Magazine for May. And
side by side with this introduction is placed the priest's claim that
he belongs to the true Church: and that Simpson, the evangelical
missionary who has come to labor for the welfare of the blacks, is
not of the true Church. Conscienceless dramatics may in many
ways serve falsehood. The writer either knows nothing of the
Catholic Church or else he has deliberately sought to give a false
impression. The same priest, Simpson is informed later, "may
try to have him knifed." Another time, Simpson meets this
Father Antoine. "Why should we quarrel you and I?" Simpson
asked. "Can we not work together for these people of yours?"
"Your friends are not my people, heretic!" Father Antoine
retorted. "Rot in hell with them!"
Then Simpson publicly attacks the "Roman" Church. (The
Anglican Church is referred to as the English Catholic Church.)
"What has it done for you?" he shouted. "You cultivate your
ground and its tithes take the food from the mouths of your chil-
dren. Does the priest tell you of salvation, which is without
money and without price, for all for all for all?"
And as Simpson thus exhorts the people, Father Antoine sud-
denly appears. "He was robed, and there were two acolytes with
him, one with a bell and the other with a candle and he began
to read in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own:
" 'Excommunicabo ' "
This, after all, was an expression of future intention. But
the author states that the whole crowd was then and there excom-
municated. "The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased,
the candle flame snuffed out: the bell tinkled, there was the flash
of a cope in the doorway, and the priest was gone."
ONE would not be surprised to read such cheap dramatics in
an anti-Catholic novel of fifty years ago, but Scribner's has
seen fit to revive it in May, 1921.
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THE
Catholic &(orld
VOL. CXIII.
JULY, 1921
No. 676
THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.
BY CUTHBERT LATTEY, S.J.
N his Encyclical on the fifteenth Centenary of St.
Jerome's death, Our Holy Father, Benedict XV.,
earnestly appeals to Catholics, as his predeces-
sors so often did, particularly Leo XIII., to restore
the Bible to the foremost place which it once
held, and should always hold, in the devotional life of
educated Catholics.
The present series of articles by Father Lattey, S.J., is
published both in honor of the Centenary and in the
hope that our readers will, if they do not already do so,
make both the reception of the Blessed Sacrament and
the reading of the Holy Scriptures their daily "Bread of
Life." As Benedict XV. writes in his Encyclical letter:
"In the Sacred Scriptures is to be found the food for the
spiritual life and the guide to the heights of Christian
perfection."
To live Christ we must receive His Body and His
Blood. "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood you shall not have life in you" (John vi.
54). To know the character of the Christ we should
live, we must be diligent students of the divinely inspired
word which reveals the Word Divine and Human. "My
Word shall not return to Me void." "As the rain and
the snow come down from heaven and return no more
COPYRIGHT. 1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YOBK.
VOL. cxin. 28
434 THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE [July,
thither, but soak the earth, and water it, and make it to
spring, and give seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
so shall My Word be which shall go forth from My
mouth" (Isaias Iv. 10) . Therefore, St. Jerome declares :
"Not to know the Scriptures is not to know Christ."
The daily reading and study of the Bible should be
characteristic of every Catholic, and such a custom a
commonplace in every Catholic home. THE EDITOR.
I.
HPHE story of the Bible in Western Christendom is to a large
extent the story of religion itself, and of necessity falls
into the same chief periods, the first entirely dominated by the
Catholic Church; the second, in which she found herself con-
fronted by Protestantism; the third, wherein the main battle
is with Rationalism. Protestantism, speaking roughly, exag-
gerated the deference due to Holy Writ, and only disputed
the Church's right to control the interpretation of it. Catholic
controversialists, therefore, proved the authority of the Church
from the sacred text; they showed that this authority alone
provided an intelligible explanation of what was meant by the
canon of Sacred Scripture, in short, they both studied and
used the Bible, but not as a rule to provide a defence of it
in the strict sense of the term. Let us render them their meed
of praise; they did their work so thoroughly, that though at
times we still have the Bible waved in our faces in the good
old style, still there are but few thinking men today that con-
sider the original Protestant position tenable. It is ridiculed
by many Rationalists, in spite of the obvious fact that their
intellectual lineage, such as it is, goes back to it. Let us take
but one striking example.
Auguste Sabatier, in his work, The Religions of Authority
and the Religion of the Spirit, 1 devotes the first book to "The
Roman Catholic Dogma of Authority," and the second, signif-
icantly enough, to "The Protestant Dogma of Authority" before
he passes to his third and last on "The Religion of the Spirit."
The first book could be dealt with on lines too familiar to need
restatement here. The second is far more formidable, and
as a destructive criticism of the old Protestantism may be said
to hold its ground still. Perhaps, the titles of its five chapters
1 English translation.
1921.] THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 435
will prove sufficiently eloquent, without any need of longer ex-
position: they are (1) Primitive Protestantism; (2) The In-
fallibillity of the Bible; (3) The Progressive Dissolution of the
Dogma; (4) The Authority of the Bible in the Nineteenth
Century; (5) What Is the Bible? Of the third book it may be
enough to quote a single sentence, found almost at the end of
the entire work: "Thus comprehended, theology abides in its
own domain, which is the study and explanation of Christian
experience." In a word, we are bidden abandon in despair
the defence of any truth as such, in matters that affect religion,
and fall back upon that sentimental skepticism which is at the
root of Modernism.
Into that mental attitude it is not to our purpose to in-
quire, but rather into its effect upon Biblical studies within
the Church. With the growth of Rationalism in the latter
half of the nineteenth century it became necessary to look to
all that was most fundamental. Much that had been common
ground ceased to be so any longer. Protestants of the old
type, for example, generally believed in the Divinity of Christ,
and would have been content to rest their belief upon St. John
and St. Paul; but nowadays many, perhaps most non-Cath-
olic students, would merely smile if one were to allege such
sources to prove that, as a historical fact, Christ Himself
claimed Godhead. Much preliminary argument would be
necessary before one could use the Fourth Gospel; it may be
said broadly that one would have to make good the positions
indicated in the answers of the Biblical Commission on the
subject, issued in May, 1907. And even then one would have
to link up what was found in St. John's Gospel upon this par-
ticular topic with what was to be read in the Synoptics and
elsewhere. Briefly, the demonstration would have to be his-
torical, not directly theological. It is the complete sundering
of the two, to the rejection of the latter, that marks the stage
of Bible study in which we find ourselves involved neces-
sarily involved, since we must needs take account of this state
of affairs, both for purposes of defence and attack. Such de-
fence and attack there must be, not merely out of charity for
those within the fold, but also to help those without. We are
debtors to all.
But before analyzing this state of affairs more closely, let
us briefly consider the action of the Holy See in this crisis.
436 THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE [July,
The parting of the ways is most clearly marked by the issue
of the Providentissimus Deus in November, 1893. That Ency-
clical is apt to be remembered by its severely dogmatic pro-
nouncements, and those mainly of a negative or exclusive
character, and it is chiefly these, naturally enough, that the
theological student finds confronting him in Denziger's En-
chiridion. But there is more, far more than this in the Provi-
dentissimus Deus, which is perhaps even greater, considering
the historical circumstances, upon its constructive side, and
must remain for ever in a certain sense the Magna Carta of
Biblical studies within the Church. For this reason it is a
pleasure to notice that Father Pope, O.P., has prefaced his
Catholic Student's Aids with a translation of the text in full.
It is, of course, impossible even to summarize the Encyclical
here. It must be enough to note how strongly it insists upon
the necessity of Biblical study, and how clearly it indicates the
best means to promote it. Early in the document St. Jerome's
saying is quoted with approval, that "ignorance of the Scrip-
tures is ignorance of Christ." There is also a striking sentence
later on which may here be translated in full: "Now this is
above all desirable and necessary, that the employment of
this same divine Scripture should influence the whole study
of theology, and be almost its soul: such was the view of th'e
matter taken in every age by the Fathers and all the most bril-
liant theologians, and they carried it into effect." Two means
of promoting Biblical studies are insisted on, which to the
present writer appear, if not the most essential, at least the
most easily neglected, namely, the consecration to this work
of carefully selected students, and their thorough grounding
in the original languages of the Bible.
The historical significance of the Encyclical lies in the fact
that the Church now stood forward plain for all to see, not
merely as the sure guardian of Holy Writ, but as the only sure
guardian. Henceforth, nothing could be taken for granted in
dealing with the vast majority of non-Catholic students; and if
well-meaning Protestants had for a long time been able to
flatter themselves that the Bible was as safe with them as with
us, such an opinion ceased to be even plausible by the end
of the nineteenth century. The point is worth insisting on, if
only as a matter of practical politics. It would be a mistake
to suppose that those without the fold commonly take any
1921.] THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 437
pleasure in seeing Holy Scripture assailed and contemned.
Heirs in some cases of a genuine devotion to the sacred books,
they are oftentimes pained at the treatment meted out to
them, and lend a willing ear to those who bid them believe
still in the written word. Nor is it necessary that a complete
and annihilating answer should be produced ready-made to
every difficulty, in order that the Church should appear as the
true guardian of the Scriptures; sometimes, indeed, a better
impression is made by a little ingenuous modesty, provided
only good reason be given for believing that a solution there
must be. Almighty God has nowhere promised that what is
clear to faith shall be clear also to reason unaided, even where
of itself it might be so.
The Providentissimus Deus laid the foundation, deep and
wide, of modern Biblical study in the Church; but if we desire
to see the programme worked out in practical detail, it is
rather to Pope Leo's successor that we must go, Pius X. Here
again, perhaps, attention has been too much riveted upon the
repression of error, useful and necessary as it was, and it has
not been fully realized that the zeal of the Pontiff, here as in
other matters, was eminently constructive. The Apostolic
Letter upon the study of Sacred Scripture in clerical semi-
naries, issued in March, 1906, sets forth an admirable scheme
of organization, in eighteen short directions. As an example
of the spirit in which they are conceived, it may be enough to
quote the eleventh, which enacts that seminaries which enjoy
the right of conferring academical degrees must increase the
number of their Biblical lectures, "and, therefore, general and
special questions are to be treated more thoroughly, and more
time and study given to Biblical archaeology, or geography, or
chronology, or theology, and likewise to the history of exe-
gesis." The vel of the original is here rendered "or," but is
evidently not intended to present alternatives mutually ex-
clusive.
The administrative action of the Holy See has been no
less significant than its pronouncements. The Biblical Com-
mission has been founded, to pronounce with authority in
matters Biblical, as well as to direct Biblical studies generally,
and grant degrees in them. Subject to it is the Biblical In-
stitute, to provide a more advanced course, primarily for
those who are already doctors of divinity, and the Commis-
438 THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE [July,
sion for the Revision of the Vulgate, to accomplish a task due
to the dignity of the Latin Church, the recovery of the exact
text of the original Latin Vulgate, such as St. Jerome first
wrote it. Thus by word and work the Holy See has insured a
rise in the general level of Biblical attainment within the
Church, besides a large increase of experts and expert knowl-
edge. The fruits of such action are already to be seen, and it
is safe to prophesy that they will be still more abundant as
time goes on.
It has been said above, as an indication of the period of
Biblical study into which we have passed, that a demonstra-
tion of Christ's Divinity would nowadays have to be historical,
rather than directly theological, by reason of the prevailing
Rationalism. For fear of confusion it may be well to explain
that by rationalism is here meant what is essential to Rational-
ism, the rejection of any a priori argument that a doctrine or
fact is true, because contained in a revelation from a personal
God. As against such Rationalism there is no need to introduce
a completely new method of argument, but to make greater
use of a method already recognized. Still, there is not merely
the question of what may be called incubation, of the effective
presentation of truths, such as the Grammar of Assent shows
to be so valuable to human nature, if it is indeed to be con-
vinced and won over; rather there must be an effort to collect
and coordinate a considerable mass of actual data, which for
a purely theological argument would have little or no value.
Not to remain in the abstract, or to proceed without
authority, let us hark back to the answers of the Biblical
Commission on St. John's Gospel, to which allusion has
already been made. In the first question it gathers up the
case for the Johannine authorship under four headings, which
may here be summed up shortly as the witness of writers, the
use of St. John's name in the title, the evidence of manuscripts
and versions, and the liturgical argument. We have here
stated practically the whole case, as far as the survey of the
evidence goes; what is highly significant is that we are not
allowed, so to speak, to give the evidence its full objective
value. The question which is answered in the affirmative is
whether, abstracting from the theological argument, it be
proved by solid historical argument that John the Apostle is
the author. In other words, it is laid down that the literary
1921.] 3TPS STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 439
and historical argument, just as it might be applied to any
pagan classic, if the question of the authorship of such a work
were mooted, is a strong and certain proof of the Johannine
authorship, quite apart from any appeal to Biblical inerrancy
or any theological consideration of that kind.
We are bidden hold that mere reason itself can come to
see that St. John must have been the author. The Biblical
student, properly trained in the estimation of evidence, ought
to be able to realize that the conclusion follows in this way
from the data. But now, in order to understand better the
nature of this mode of study, let us imagine a perverse inter-
pretation of the decree. Let us suppose that the student makes
up his mind that he must think out the whole matter entirely
for himself, laying aside every possible theological prejudice,
and in fact any regard for the Catholic faith itself. Incident-
ally, this brings with it the imagined duty of reading any-
thing and everything he can pick up on the point. And what
happens? Carried off his feet by Loisy, let us say, or Pro-
fessor Bacon, he reluctantly comes to the conclusion that, to
whomsoever we may owe the Fourth Gospel, it certainly is
not the work of the Apostle St. John.
What are we to think of this imaginary student? It is not
his conclusion that here calls for comment, but his method.
And in the first place, before referring once more to the Bib-
lical Commission, let us note that he has certainly fallen foul
of some of the condemned propositions in Pope Pius X.'s
Lamentabili. It may be enough to quote the twelfth: "An
exegete, if he wish to apply himself to Biblical studies with
profit, must first lay aside any preconceived opinion as to the
supernatural origin of Sacred Scripture, and must interpret
it just like other merely human documents." Further, he is
in evident disaccord with the Biblical Commission itself, since
he comes to a conclusion precisely opposite to that enjoined.
How then is he to be extricated from his quandary, and that
without resort to theological arguments? The best answer
seems to be, that he should have used his theological reasons
as a negative criterion of truth, but not as a positive criterion;
that is a simple and expressive distinction, which puts the
matter in a nutshell.
He can use his knowledge to bar certain conclusions, since
he knows them false; if he examines the matter carefully
440 THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE [July,
afresh, and be competent in other respects, he may be trusted
to find out the fallacy. Otherwise he must, indeed, fall back
upon his faith, and confess that without it he would go astray !
And in the same way by patient study he will perceive the
force of the arguments for the true conclusion; the fact that
he has used his faith as a negative criterion still leaves it
undeniably true that he reached his conclusion by the light of
reason, and is satisfied by the light of reasoning that the argu-
ment is valid. He has really and truly "abstracted from the
theological argument" by not using it as a positive criterion
of truth, as a direct argument wherein all that we know from
revelation, and from authority based upon revelation, is
brought to bear upon the point.
It is not here asserted that the Johannine authorship of
the Fourth Gospel is in the strict sense a revealed truth; it
would be out of place to discuss the matter now, though it
may be pointed out that the truth of Holy Writ would at all
events be difficult to defend on any other hypothesis. But
cases certainly arise where there is question of an article of
faith; for example, it is an article of faith, clearly set forth in
Wisdom xiii. and again in Romans i. (which is based upon
the former passage), and explicitly defined by the Vatican
Council, that mere reason from the consideration of creatures
can know for certain the existence of God. Accordingly, we
may set our reason to make such a deduction, with faith as a
negative criterion safeguarding the whole process.
It should also be noted, however, that the duty of internal
assent can by no means be limited to cases in which the Holy
See is certainly speaking with infallible authority; it may
suffice to refer to a Motu Proprio on the authority of the
decrees of the Biblical Commission, issued in November, 1907,
and to a good treatment of the subject in the first volume of
Father Slater's Cases of Conscience, in a case on "The Roman
Congregations." Nor, again, must it be thought that this use
of the Faith as a negative criterion of truth may be entirely
confined to theologians; the Catholic scientist or historian can
be certain that some modern hypotheses are false, because
they evidently conflict with the Faith, before ever they com-
mence to investigate them as specialists in that department.
Still, it is in very truth with their reason that they see a flaw
in the argument, and they are satisfied that they can really
1921.] THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 441
and truly prove the flaw to exist, without any appeal to a
theological argument. And so it is in some other matters. In
a word, according to the Biblical Commission, we must ab-
stract from the theological argument, but this is not the same
as ignoring its existence altogether.
The example here taken from the Biblical Commission's
answers, that of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, concerns
a conclusion which it is necessary, or at least highly desirable,
to prove in the course of Apologetics, which is the demonstra-
tion that God has given a revelation and intrusted it to the
Church. And it must be proved "abstracting from the theo-
logical argument," since otherwise there would be a vicious
circle, that is, if we first proved the Johannine authorship
from revelation and what it entails, and in particular from
Biblical inerrancy, and if we then went on to prove the fact
of revelation on the strength, among other premises, of the
Johannine authorship. And again it must be shown that
unaided reason can validly deduce the existence of God from
creatures. This is evidently necessary in order to the proper
defence of Scripture (Wisdom xiii., Romans i.) and, since the
time of the Vatican Council, to the defence of an article of
faith fully defined.
But quite apart from cases such as these, exegetes, like
theologians generally, and indeed, like Catholics in several
other departments of knowledge, constantly have to be con-
sidering the force of evidence "abstracting from the theo-
logical argument," and such a course finds a sanction not
merely in the words of the Biblical Commission already sev-
eral times quoted, but also in its constant practice, as may be
seen from a careful inspection of its decrees. Indeed, in the
very first question and answer it ever issued concerning the
treatment of definite books of Holy Scripture, it appealed,
among other things, to the internal evidence of the text itself
as proof of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 2
This manner of employing Holy Writ is in reality at least
as necessary for the scientific study of theology as for dealing
with Rationalists outside, and indeed, we naturally expect the
former to be brought into some relation to the needs arising
from the latter, from a contact for which it must be in a
measure a preparation. In any case, accurate method de-
June, 1906.
442 THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE [July,
mands that the precise force of a Scripture proof should be
accurately gauged, and it is obvious that the proof which is
perfectly plain even to the unaided light of reason, will, ceteris
paribus, be the strongest. In such a case we can say to the
modern Rationalist, "My dear Sir, you may take this doctrine
or leave it, or you may extract what you imagine has per-
manent value and discard the rest; one thing you cannot do,
without you show yourself knave or fool you cannot deny
that the doctrine is in the text." That St. Paul and St. John,
for instance, teach the Divinity of Christ is beyond all serious
dispute, even if their writings be treated as purely human
documents, like the works of Plato or Aristotle.
By insisting upon this outside, we put a powerful check
upon reckless histories of dogma and so-called studies in
Biblical and Patristic theology; by insisting upon it inside
our schoolrooms we may teach students to distinguish nicely
the precise weight of individual proofs. No doubt, one must
be careful. Sometimes a different interpretation of a passage
could not be rejected with absolute confidence, apart from
reasons more or less theological. Sometimes, again, it may
be that the Fathers hardly do more than take occasion from
a suitable text to dilate upon a particular doctrine, without
committing themselves definitely to the statement that the
text clearly contains the doctrine. It may even happen that
an exegete or theologian may be tempted to confess that
unless there were revelation or authority to guide him, he
would be inclined to lean to the wrong side; for Almighty God
has not given His Church and His revelation in vain, and we
cannot always presume that without such help we should be
so much better than those who disown them.
But, in a word, it is evidently to be desired in the interests
of scientific truth that teacher and taught should estimate
aright the exact demonstrative power of every argument, and
from every point of view. In so far as they fail to do this,
they remain still in unbecoming ignorance of the matter with
which they are dealing.
Not merely should the sacred text always be studied in
the full light of all that our faith and our theology teaches us,
but in many places, at all events, as has been explained, it
should also be studied in a way that makes abstraction from
such light.
1921.] THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 443
Biblical theology, therefore, though expressly enforced
by Pope Pius, in the document cited above, as part of a thor-
ough training in Holy Writ, cannot be treated as something
foreign to the study of strictly dogmatic theology, of which,
indeed, it should be, in the words of Pope Leo, also quoted
already, almost the soul. For the primary function of dog-
matic theology, is, surely, to tell us what has been revealed;
and everything that is asserted in Holy Writ is revealed. Con-
sequently, to Holy Writ the dogmatic theologian goes, no less
than to tradition; and in the former case he needs the help
of technical works on Biblical theology, no less than of Patris-
tic and Scholastic studies in the latter. On his side the exegete
needs to be a trained dogmatic theologian, to have done a good
course and to be prepared to follow it up, according as he finds
it expedient for his own studies. In this field of Biblical theol-
ogy it is an enormous help to have had the Scholastic training;
one cannot but recognize this when one compares such excel-
lent works as Pere Prat's Theologie de S. Paul or Father Hetze-
nauer's Theologia Biblica with the attempts of outsiders who,
learned though they be in certain departments, neither have a
fixed standpoint themselves, nor are schooled to appreciate
the logical implications of doctrines.
After all, it is Biblical theology, the question of the doc-
trines involved, that matters most in Biblical studies, and it is
in that field that Catholic exegetes have scored, and will score,
most heavily. Nevertheless, it is much to be hoped that in
archaeology and philology and textual criticism they will also
come in large numbers to stand in the front rank. For this
organized effort is needed, both to produce scholars capable
of dealing efficiently with manuscripts and antiquities and the
like at first-hand, and to give them ample opportunity of
doing so. But where the Holy See resolutely shows the way.
there can be no serious ground for misgiving, nor again, as
has been said, can it be doubted that progress is being made.
In the matter of archaeology, it is much to be hoped that the
monumental and authoritative work upon Jerusalem, which
the Dominican Fathers there began to publish before the
War, may now be continued.
THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN.
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A.
HEN the Roman Legions were finally withdrawn
from Britain, that most capable and masterful
of races had held sway over the greater part of
the southern half of the island for something
like four hundred years, that is more than the
period during which white men have dominated the Continent
of North America. What traces did they leave behind them
of their occupation? No doubt, to begin with, they must
have left many curious streaks of foreign blood in different
parts of the island, for large numbers of soldiers do not reside
in a country for four centuries and, as we may feel sure in
many cases, settle down there on retirement from the army,
without leaving considerable traces of themselves in the popu-
lation. And what a cosmopolitan horde it was that occupied
Britain especially along the Wall which cut off the wild Picts
and Caledonians Dacians, Asturians, Thracians, boatmen
from the Tigris constantly employed on the Tyne, a mixed
contingent! In Chester, a purely military city, there were
Rhenish, Greek and other peoples, and amongst many others
there is an altar set up by a man from Samosata on the banks
of the Euphrates.
Of course, the underlying race was purely Celtic, and
when the Romans left that race formed the crumb, though
there was a Latin crust so the late Professor Haverfield put
it. And, in my opinion, the Celtic crumb has always persisted
and formed the larger part of the loaf except in places like
East Anglia, which during the Saxon troubles and later on
account of constant contact with the Low Countries, has doubt-
less received a large admixture of Teutonic blood. Mr. Belloc
has lately tried to show that the Saxon kinglets only occupied
a narrow strip of the southern and eastern coasts, enough to
cut the rest of the country off from that free communication
with the Continent which it had so long enjoyed and from
which it had so much benefited. This is flat contrary to the
views of the older school of Stubbs, Freeman and Green
1921.] THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN 445
(whose work Mr. Belloc calls romance), but in any case far
nearer to the truth so I think than that of the extollers of
"the Anglo-Saxon Race." When St. Augustine came and his-
tory once more commences after some one hundred and fifty
years of cloud and doubt, the crumb, nay, in most parts of the
country, practically the whole loaf, was Celtic and so, to my
thinking, it has very largely remained, though there, as
elsewhere even in the most remote and detached parts of
Ireland, it has had a rich variety of other flours mixed in
with it.
The Romans also left the country provided with a splendid
system of roads; largely, no doubt, along the lines of the
previous Celtic trackways, but improved and magnificently
made. Until Macadam arose (he died in 1836) Britain had
nothing to compare with the Roman roads for excellence, and
even now has none better than they were. These great roads
ran much on the lines of the chief railway systems of today,
for the Watling Street (as the Saxons afterwards called it),
which is the Holyhead Road of today, runs almost parallel
with the main line of the London and Northwestern Railway
as the Erming Street does with the Great Northern; the Ake-
man Street, along which the aching citizen dragged his gouty
frame to Bath, Aquae Sulis, that is the waters of Sul, the Celtic
Minerva, is the track of the Great Western, and so on. On
these roads they built numerous cities, which in most cases
are the great cities of today London, Lincoln, York, New-
castle-on-Tyne, Leicester, Manchester, Gloucester, and many
others.
There are only two Roman cities which were never built
over Calleva Atrebatum, the city in the wood of the Atre-
bates, a Celtic tribe, whose headquarters, as the name implies,
was at Artois and Viroconium under the shelter of the Wrekin,
whose name no doubt includes whatever Celtic word possibly
"vri" is common to the two. Silchester and Wroxeter, to
give them their modern names, never were built over. The
first has been and the second is being carefully excavated to
the great advantage of scholars. There are great cities which
had no Roman predecessors, such as Birmingham, Bristol and
Liverpool, and the reasons for this are plain enough, had we
time to pursue them, but, on the whole, it may be said that the
bulk of English cities rest on Roman foundations.
446 THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN [July,
But, incomparably, the greatest legacy which the Roman
Occupation left was the Catholic Faith, and to this the re-
mainder of this article must be devoted. Indeed, what has gone
before is no more than an introduction to what is to follow.
There have been various stories related to account for the in-
troduction of Christianity into the country, and the most extra-
ordinary attempts have been made to prove that the early
Church somehow or another came into existence without any
relation to and remained unrelated to the Church in Rome,
and, in fact, one would imagine from their phraseology that
some of these writers envisage it as a kind of early Protestant
organization, Presbyterian to wit, as I have seen it claimed
to be. Let us look at the plain facts of history and see what
a distorted picture all this is.
There is a legend that St. Peter visited the island and was
in it, and in great danger of his life during the time of the
outbreak under Boudicca. St. Paul is also said to have visited
Britain, but, though so cautious and conservative an authority
as Conybeare says that there is "nothing essentially improb-
able" in these two legends, we had better agree with Ramsay
who, speaking of the Pauline visit, says that what we are told
about it is "too uncertain to be used as evidence." It is inter-
esting, however, to note that, if Tischendorf is right in accept-
ing the reading of the Codex Siniaticus in the Second Epistle
to Timothy of Gallia for Galatia, St. Paul did send a missionary
to Gaul, and may well have done the same by Britain. We
may pass over the legendary visit of St. Simon Zelotes, and
cannot even linger over that of St. Joseph of Arimathea, who
is said to have landed with twelve companions at the foot of
the hill now known as the Tor on which the last abbot
(Whiting) of that great monastery was in later days to be
hanged for the foul crime of being faithful to his trust. There
Joseph is said to have founded what came to be known as the
vetusta ecclesia, the ancient church, and there, too, he planted
his staff which grew into the thorn that flowered at Christmas
and was rooted up by the soldiers of the first ruffian of the
name of Cromwell, whose blight fell on the ancient houses
where God was served. The old story speaks only of a Joseph
and twelve companions; it was left for later generations to add
Arimathea. There is no inherent improbability in the landing
of a Joseph and his band, in fact a very good, though not con-
1921.] THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN 447
elusive, case can be made out for it. Nor, indeed, is it in any
way impossible for it to have been him of Arimathea.
We may pass these stories by with some regret that they
cannot be proved to be true and with the reflection that, if they
were, they would cement and not sever the early connection of
the Church in Britain with the central Church which was in
Rome. But when we have the real means of the Christianiza-
tion of the country staring us in the face, why seek for an-
other? Who brought into the country the numerous exotic
religions which undoubtedly were practised there the belief
in Cybele, Astarte, Isis, Mithras, the Deae Matres, and many
another? The answer is the soldiers, and the same reply may
surely be made in the case of Christianity. Cumont, a first-
rate authority, has told us that the Roman soldier, always in
face of danger, was greatly addicted to religion of some kind
or another, as is testified by the many votive tablets which he
has left all over the Empire, and nowhere more than in
Britain. At the heart of Rome Christianity flourished, even in
high places. "All the saints salute you: especially they that
are of Caesar's household," says St. Paul in the Epistle to the
Philippians.
Where the soldiery went, there went their religions and
their priests. There were Mithraic grottoes along the Wall
and in London as there were along the margin of the Sahara
and elsewhere throughout the Empire. There was a Christian
Church in Calleva; there were half a dozen in Thamugadi, an
African town which were of an exactly similar type. And as
Mithraic priests accompanied the worshippers of that Oriental
deity, so no doubt Christian priests accompanied the believers
in a purer Faith.
What picture do we get of this Church during the later
days of the Roman occupation, for that is the important point?
A. D. 314 is the crucial date, for in that year was held the
Council of Aries (Arelate to give its Roman name) and there
were present three British Bishops, together with a sacerdos
(pray note the title, not presbyter as many would wish) and
diaconus. The latter two are unnamed and may have repre-
sented a Province temporarily without a Metropolitan, for
Metropolitans the three {Bishops may have been. Eborius was
Bishop of Eburacum or York, which was in most senses the real
capital of Roman Britain; Restitutus of Londinium, the larg-
448 THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN [July,
est and richest, though not the most important city. Adelphius
is described as of Colonia Londoniensum, an obvious blunder
probably for Castra Legionum or Caerleon-on-Usk, the most
important place in the southwest and a likely site for an arch-
bishopric. Let us note the date, for Christianity had only
been set up for two years, the battle of the Milvian Bridge,
after which Constantine established that religion, having taken
place in 312. Let us also remember that this Constantine was
the son of a British Christian woman (princess as some think,
though the story about Coel "old King Cole" of Colchester
is purely mythical), and that he was born at York and there
proclaimed Emperor on the death of his father, Constantius
Chlorus. And last of all, let us by no means forget that the
date of the Diocletian persecution in Britain is fixed by Cony-
beare as 303.
All this proves to the hilt the fact that about the begin-
ning of the century in question there was a flourishing and
firmly established Catholic Church, in full communion with
the Catholic Church elsewhere. St. Jerome, who flourished
circa 342, confirms this: "Neither is the Church of the city of
Rome to be held one, and that of the whole world another.
Both Gaul and Britain and Africa and Persia and the East
and India, and all barbarian nations adore one Christ, observe
one rule of Truth." St. Gildas tells us that St. Alban, the
protomartyr of Britain, and seventeen thousand others per-
ished in the Diocletian persecution. Gildas was a poet not a
historian, and no doubt exaggerated, for though he may be,
indeed quite probably is, right about St. Alban, we need no
more believe in his seventeen thousand others than in the
eleven thousand virgins said to have perished with St. Ursula
in Germany. It was the custom of early days to deal in large
figures; witness the numbers given as to the Boudicca affair.
But historians nowadays are certainly not inclined to
agree with the learned Haddan that the Catholic Church when
the legions left was but a small thing. Before the departure of
the legions we hear of it again, for at the Council of Ariminium,
held in 360, there were also present three British Bishops,
and special mention is made of them since they were the only
Bishops present who accepted their traveling expenses, per-
haps on account of the distance they had to come, perhaps
because their Church was not a rich one. Then the Legions
1921.] THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN 449
depart; the date is uncertain, but we may safely say before
the middle of the next century, and it must be confessed that
we know little of what happened after that. There is the visit
of St. Germ anus of Auxerre somewhere about 429, perhaps,
much about the time that the Legions were leaving. He was
sent by the Pope to extinguish the Pelagian heresy, which was
making, it would appear, some headway, perhaps, too, the
more rapidly since its author was a Briton.
We are told that he visited St. Albans, or Verulamium,
as it then was, venerated the relics of the martyr and took
back some of the dust where his blood had been shed to his
own cathedral city. After St. Germanus, nothing until the
writings of Gildas, which cannot well be earlier than 545, i. e.,
more than a century after the last record. We do not get
much that is valuable from him, though we must be thankful
for the straws which we do collect. We gather that Latin was
still the tongue at any rate of the educated classes, as Professor
Haverfield has shown that it was the tongue of most city
dwellers while the Romans were in occupation. For in telling
of the coming of the first horde of the "most ferocious people
of the execrable name of Saxons, hateful alike to God and
man," as he puts it, he says that they came in three ships,
which he tells us they called "cyulas," but which, he adds, are,
in our tongue, "longae naves."
And, of course, since his "liber Querulus" apt title is
largely a denunciation of clergy and laity for their shortcom-
ings, we get the picture of a Catholic Church carrying on be-
hind the screen of paganism thick or thin, but impermeable
and sorely limited by want of constant contact with the
centre of authority. And there we are until the coming of St.
Augustine, with which history recommences in 597. He found
a Church in full existence, and we must assume in all essen-
tial matters identical with that of Rome, save in the matters of
the form of the tonsure and the date for keeping Easter.
These were deemed to be of great importance at that time,
though it may be difficult for us to see why so much fuss was
made about them. But we do not hear a word of difference of
opinion as to doctrine or as to the remaining, and surely
much more important, ritual matters, such as the Holy Sacri-
fice, which we cannot imagine would have been left out of
court had there been any question about them.
vot. cxin. 29
450 THE ROMAN LEGACY TO BRITAIN [July,
It is easy to see why the Celts did not look with a favor-
able eye on St. Augustine for, as in so many other cases in
history, politics became mixed up with religion. Much or
little of their country as the pagan Saxons may have held,
they held more of it than the Celtic tribes desired. St. Augus-
tine had to reach them through that pagan barrier, and he
did so after converting it, to some extent at least, to the Faith.
Hence he arrived under the worst possible auspices, and met
with a treatment which was disedifying no doubt, but by no
means surprising.
Still the main point is that there was the Church and,
what is more, it seems to have wiped out all other kinds of
beliefs. When Claudius is said to have put down Druidism, so
powerful a belief at the time of the coming of the Romans,
Bryce thought that all that he did was to put a stop to the cruel
human sacrifices, just as British rule in India has forbidden
suttee without interfering with the religion of which it once
formed a part. However this may be, the fact remains that
we do not hear of this form of religion during the later part
of the Roman occupation, nor after that had come to an end
does there seem to have been any revival of it as one would
have expected to have been the case were there any active ad-
herents in the recesses of wild Wales as it now is.
Nor, of course, is there any mention of any of the other
rites which followed in the train of the Roman soldiery. Mr.
Wells, whom one may admire or not as one chooses as a
novelist, but cannot greatly respect as a historian, has lately
committed himself to the opinion that Christianity is "one
of the numerous blood and ceremonial salvation religions that
infested the decaying Empire." This is, however, a point
which deserves and may receive fuller consideration, and we
must return to our point from which we have only wandered
in appearance.
The great fact is that when St. Augustine came to the
island, apart from the pagan Saxons, it was the home of an
organized Christian Church. From its commencement right
down to the time when the Legions left, and history goes into
seclusion under a cloud, it remained an organized Christian
Church (Catholic, of course, for the two were synonymous)
in full communion with Rome. When it once more Appears
from behind the cloud it reappears disheveled, no doubt, from
1921.] ALONE 451
its long seclusion and want of intercourse with the rest of the
civilized world, but for the rest, save in two points, not, we
submit, of the first importance, in full agreement with the
Church at large. The Church, which was the Mother of good
deeds until the wicked hunger for gold coupled with the still
more wicked lust of the flesh in a monarch and his creatures
tried, almost successfully, to destroy it, was the descendant
of this, and how any student of history can look upon it at any
time in its career as a Protestant, still more a Presbyterian, or-
ganization is certainly difficult to understand.
ALONE.
BY BRIAN PADRAIC o'SEASNAIN.
HID in a cloud of dreams on this far peak
I watch the world's little tale go by
And wait for the slow stars to climb the sky.
When the far, hungering mountains have devoured
The golden apple that each evening brings
Twilight comes on drift of bat-like wings.
My firelight hunts the dark with reddened spears
The lowlands sink into a far-off dusk,
. . . The circling forest sends a drift of musk. . . .
Silence . . . and stars . . . and the wide mystery
Of ancient secret mountains veiled in shade;
I wondering that saw their dim shapes fade.
Waking ... I feel the stillness creeping close,
Stalking my spirit to the verge of sleep;
Slow-breathing the dark air, I drink the deep
Unveiled night-passion of the star-drenched wild-
Then . . . ghostly . . . drift out on the tides of being
Beyond the hidden gates . . . beyond all seeing. . . .
JORIS KARL HUYSMANS: EGOIST AND MYSTIC.
BY GEORGE N. SHUSTER.
ROM egoism, in a sublimated, literary sense, we
were until lately comparatively free. This was
perhaps one direct result that could be claimed
for Democracy as America interpreted the word,
although the lustiest voices raised in eulogy of
popular freedom were, by some strange chance, the property
of the only real egoists we produced: Whitman, whose jerky
rhythms cover the "Myself" in a semi-barbaric palimpsest,
and Thoreau, who hunted individuality on the banks of
Walden pond. Lately, however, we have been developing
Egos in startling quantities, and it would seem that the War
has been an especially prolific hatchery.
Accordingly we ought to be interested in egoism, although
logically it has no need of us. For the egoist stands against
the world: his discovery of himself is attended by a reversal
of Balboa's sentiments on the finding of the Pacific. That
intrepid explorer was interested chiefly in his novel environ-
ment, while the egoist is exultant because the environment is
too stupid to see that he is there.
The real trouble with the egoists lies not in what they say,
but in what they are. Pointing out people's errors has little
purpose if one does not belong to the people. Every egoist
dwells in a glass house, and his great diversion is throwing
stones, a futile and rather expensive pastime. Somewhere
there must be a trysting-place, with a standard round which
the enemies of the World may gather and roll the drums of
life and death. For us, however, there can exist only one such
standard which, as everybody with historical feeling knows, is
the Christian tradition. This is all the more evident since the
Supermen have died: it used to be agreeable before the War
to hear of economic forces which would amalgamate the
world, dispense absolute justice through the medium of a
beneficent State and throw the battle-sword to rust on the
shining fields of peace. Nobody talks aloud of these things
now, for we have rediscovered the amazing existence of men.
1921.] JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 453
Accordingly it is clearer than ever that we must restore the
decent, traditional civilization of Christian men.
No less true is the fact that the Christian tradition is
synonymous with the Catholic Church. Indeed, the degenera-
tion of individualism into a critical, rather than a constructive,
philosophy dates from the Protestant revolt; with the im-
perious statement of the sufficiency of egoistic reason began
the weakening of that reason. If it did introduce the organiza-
tion of commercial civilization, Protestantism prepared no less
for the disintegration of intelligence. All that is so clear,
it hardly needs to be said. But if the Christian tradition be
the Church, can the egoistic spirit possibly submit? What is
to become of liberty of thought, that arrogant freedom which
seems the very root of genius? Many believe that it is in
nature opposed to the Church. Frequently enough we are told
that Catholicism could appeal only to those who need some-
thing in the fashion of a spiritual prop to lean upon; that the
"educated classes" must perforce be driven to another creed.
Now it would take too long to follow the persistent appear-
ance of the Christian tradition through modern thought;
strangely enough, whenever the individual was stressed, Chris-
tianity stood near the writer. Perception of the Great Tradi-
tion resulted always in powerful Romantic movements that
filled the dry shells of literary form with flesh and blood; and
it is remarkable enough that Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis
to prove that Christ is always present in Romanticism. The
great Catholic victory, however, lies in the conversion of
numerous gifted men who had all the qualities of egoism.
It is impossible to enumerate here more than a few. The
genius of Coventry Patmore was almost haughtily individual-
istic, and yet his violent will was brought into complete har-
mony with the most mystical tenets of the Faith; Monsignor
Benson was certainly not of a submissive temperament, and
his brother says that, "it was his very isolation, his independ-
ence, his lack of deference to personal authority which carried
him into the Church of Rome." Among men who came to ac-
cept Catholicism for reasons closely allied to Social Philos-
ophy, Mr. Cecil Chesterton is a prominent example. A hater
at all times of oppression, and at first a Socialist, Mr. Chester-
ton became a Catholic, I think because he believed that the
Christian tradition alone had stood for liberty.
454 JOR1S KARL HUYSMANS [July,
In France, whose ancient fields have witnessed the shock
of battle between so many philosophies, the actions of the
egoists have been no less startling. Throughout the dark and
prosaic eighteenth century, era of the musty twilight of kings,
the minds of philosophers were directed against the Christian
tradition; throughout the following cycle the spirit of irreligion
bade fair to triumph no less surely. It was accepted doctrine
that intelligence meant a discard of traditional Christianity;
that to be a captain of one's soul was almost equivalent to
denying that soul. Nevertheless, one by one many egoists
bowed their heads to the music of ecclesiastical organs; and
though it had seemed that the Church could never survive the
attack of science, the lure of life, or the long-settled contempt
of the professors, those men who had most closely identified
themselves with individualism went back to her. Of course,
it was not a universal submission, because the souls of men,
despite everything in the universe, are in the hands of God.
But no Satanic school ever possessed a master who went to
greater depths than Baudelaire, and he died a Catholic; no
lover of the people wrote of them in more original syllables
than Francois Coppee, and his submission was complete; no
believer in egoism spoke more strongly than Maurice Barres,
and he has become a champion of the Christian tradition.
In the face of Voltaire, Renan and Zola, regardless of Decad-
ence and Modernism, the egoist has returned. For there is no
freedom anywhere in the world except the freedom of a Chris-
tian man.
But, even more profoundly than with any of these writers,
the splendid darkness of the old, half -forgotten religion
brought light to the greatest of the French naturalists, Joris
Karl Huysmans. Although not well-known in America, our
absurd deference to the name of Zola serving to keep other
realists in oblivion, this man has influenced French thought
to an incalculable extent. At first, he represented in prose the
beliefs of the decadent poets, and the uneasy prurience of the
end of the nineteenth century found in his style all the morbid-
ity, the sickly perfume, that were required to give it expres-
sion. An egoist for whom nothing in life had permanent
value, who found all things unhealthy, filthy even, Huysmans
possessed, nevertheless, an eye of miscroscopic power that rev-
eled in color, in piquant detail, and never failed to regard a
1921.] JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 455
scene as actually individual. His power for reproducing little
things in words was just as great as his contempt for the
greatest things; so that he came to be considered a literary
Mephisto whose satire was as brilliant and unbearable as the
depths from which it sprang.
Finally, however, there came a moment in Huysmans' life
when the beauty of the ancient tradition broke through upon
his soul; after this he was led almost unconsciously to a com-
plete acceptance not only of the graces and dogmas of the
Church, but also of those difficult and exalted implications
which have meant so much to the mystic saints. Seldom has
there been a conversion so unexpected and so complete : read-
ing the account, one almost doubts the reality. Huysmans,
who as a naturalist had admired no beauty that was not sen-
sual, half -corrupt and bizarre, was set on fire by a glory whose
revelation was to him like a meeting with someone robustly,
transcendently alive.
There is no other novelist who has narrated the Christian
life with anything like the same exactness and fervor.
Throughout his career as a Catholic writer he held fast to the
same sincerity in thought and expression; in other words, he
continued to be the egoist he had always been, even giving
vehement expression to the dislike he entertained for the devo-
tional practices of some Catholics. In the end he became a seer,
lost in visions of the old ages of belief, when Beauty seemed to
dwell indeed with every Christian, and when the streets of
heaven were almost as much in men's minds as the ways of
earth. For these reasons his influence has been so extensive
that bounds can scarcely be set to it, nor can one foresee what
effect his example will have on the future. We are interested
in him as an egoist who took his place with the most unrelent-
ingly individual of men, and as a Catholic who became one of
those for whom the discoveries of science and the affairs of
the world are like garments that one sheds when going, peni-
tent and with utter submission, to bathe in the love of God.
Biographical details are neither numerous nor important.
Huysmans was born in Paris, February 5, 1848. His family
was of Dutch origin, having come from Breda; an ancestor,
Huysmans of Mechlin, is represented in the Louvre by several
sketches done in the Flemish manner of the fourteenth cen-
tury, vividly realistic and quite individual. Although his father
456 JORIS KARL HUYSMANS [July,
was also a painter, Huysmans was destined for the law, but
accepted, at the age of twenty, a position with the Minister of
the Interior, and remained there until his conversion, except
for a brief period of military service during the War of 1870.
Literature became his real purpose in life, and he joined en-
thusiastically with Zola and others in the realistic movement.
When the Goncourt Academy was formed, Huysmans was
looked upon as one of the most important members; later, in
1900, he became its president. During nearly his entire life
he lived at No. 11 Rue de Sevres, Paris, in a small apartment
containing his books and pictures; the oriental hangings of
this high room seemed to inspire him with the sense of color
which is one of the chief qualities of his writing.
His personal appearance and disposition are matters for
dispute. Arthur Symons, who met Huysmans rather frequently
before his conversion, speaks of the "cat" about him; the com-
monplace benevolence of his face lighted up suddenly with a
strange maliciousness; the sardonic conversation that de-
lighted in withering epigram. James Huneker was struck by
"the essentially Semitic contour of his head." Others, how-
ever, who were intimately acquainted with Huysmans after the
conversion, speak of his humor and simple, honest heart
After having come into the Church, the novelist lived for a
while at a house which he had built near the famous Bene-
dictine Abbey at Liguge, but subsequent to the expulsion of
the Religious he returned to Paris, where he died.
Any discussion of Huysmans' earlier works must neces-
sarily be somewhat unpleasant, for, although endowed with a
keener perception and a more refined diction than Zola's, he
went to the extremes of the naturalistic school: still, it would
be quite impossible without some consideration of his first
books, either to give a satisfactory insight into his artistic
nature or to explain the miracle of faith that was later
wrought in him. Croquis Parisiens are poems in prose about
various scenes in Paris, chosen seemingly at random. The
Decadents, in their super-refined theorizing, had conceived the
idea of a "prose-poem" which would present the substance of
novels in a form so exquisitely refined that it would appeal
only to the "dozen chosen souls scattered through the uni-
verse." This art has now become quite commonplace, but as
Huysmans first used it there is a certain finesse of epithet and
1921.] JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 457
discontent with anything except the one word, a certain color
and verve and rhythm, that both fascinate and repel like
wine with a dash of wormwood. The most remarkable thing
about these sketches is, of course, their snobbish individual-
ism, the trade-mark of egoism.
Les Soeiirs Vatard is a novel of much descriptive power,
although the narrative, being devoid of any sustained move-
ment that could be termed a plot, is merely a sort of thread
that connects the pictures from still-life. No modern writer
has succeeded so fully in reproducing besides the mere tableau
all the attendant details of atmosphere, color, smell and sound.
While this novel served no other discernible purpose than to
display the banalities of existence as exemplified in the lives
of two sisters, Celine and Desiree Vatard, the idea of degout
was most forcibly expressed in one of Huysmans' short-stories,
A Vau-l'Eau. The central figure in this brilliant pessimistic
narrative is a governmental employee whose two considera-
tions in life are bad books and worse health. After a series of
depressing adventures, the poor fellow betakes himself, with-
out purpose or hope, to a promenade along the darkened
Seine, sounding the keynote of ennui in a phrase of almost un-
bearable misery: "Nous sojnm.es les malheurenx qui allons
eternellement chercher an dehors une part mesuree de fricot
dans un bol!"
But the soul of Huysmans, though apparently that of a
hopeless and worn-out decadent, was not standing still : sensi-
tive sincerity, restless search for ultimate truth, which with
him were just as relentless in thoughtful art as exactness is
with others in science, had led him to the camp of Schopen-
hauer, but they could not keep him there. A Rebours ap-
peared in 1884, mystifying all the accepted critics, and nearly
causing a rupture between its author and Zola. Thes?e effects
were not surprising, for the book was not merely a novel, but
almost a ritual of Decadence: into it were crowded the most
bizarre experiments for arousing the decrepit senses of a
finely-organized roue, art and literary criticism, and a merci-
less condemnation of everything the ordinary citizen is proud
of. The hero, Des Esseintes, is a man whose disgust with life
has driven him into solitude; he builds a house at some dis-
tance from Paris, fitting it out in sensuous luxury with those
tapestries, furnishings, paintings and books which seem to him
458 JOR1S KARL HUYSMANS [July,
most exquisite. Strangely enough, however, his ruminations
cannot dissociate themselves from recollections of the religion
to which he had once belonged: he dreams of the purity of
monastic life, the tender influences inherent in his early Jesuit
education, and, above all, of the haunting beauty of the
ancient Church with its charity and fervent faith, its engros-
sing symbolism, its evident connection with the shining city of
God. When at last his shattered nerves give way entirely and
he is forced to go back into the society he scorns, a prayer
rises almost involuntarily to his lips: "Ah! my courage is
gone and my heart sinks. . . . Lord, have mercy on the Chris-
tian who doubts, on the agnostic who wishes to believe, on the
outcast from life who sets sail alone, during the night, under
a sky no longer lighted by the consoling stars of the ancient
Hope."
Among all the critics who commented on the book, only
one saw the definite trend. Barbey d'Aurevilly, a remarkable,
visionary Catholic whose vow of poverty allowed him no
earthly goods except an iron bed, wrote this bit of astounding
criticism: "After the Fleurs du Mai I said to Baudelaire, log-
ically there is nothing left for you now except the mouth of a
pistol or the foot of the cross. . . . But will the author of
A Reboars choose between them?" The book is indeed one of
those strangely individual masterpieces which can never be
imitated and which, like the crises in good drama, are preg-
nant with the parting of life's ways. Everyone who cares to
understand the Decadence of the fin de siecle must come to
this book; but he will find also the tenebrous and palpitant
promise of a peaceful dawn.
That dawn, however, did not break immediately. There
had come into Huysmans' mind a hungry preoccupation with
the religious tradition, an intellectual interest in those little-
known Middle Ages which were so blessedly different from
modern times. The ideal of Poe and Baudelaire had been a
shudder in the dark, a fiendish stab into a disordered brain,
and perhaps it was their influence which led Huysmans to the
study of the most terrifying manifestation of Spiritualism,
Demonism. The result of his researches in occult documents
was the novel, La-Bas, which became one of the most widely
read books in France. Huysmans himself is represented in
the story by Durtal, whose friend Carhaix, bell-ringer at Saint
1921.] JOR1S KARL HUYSMANS 459
Sulpice, is altogether a loveable man: he moves about the
windy towers with the tenderness and understanding which a
wise shepherd gives his sheep. Then there are terrible char-
acters, Gilles de Rais, Mme. de Chantelouve, and many fallen
ecclesiastics, all given to the horrible rites of Satanism.
Moving against the background of the dissolving Middle
Ages, these monstrous figures rise up like the demons in Dante,
wicked and, nevertheless, fascinating. The weird rites of the
cult furnish opportunity for a series of word-pictures strong
and shadowy as the canvases of Rembrandt; one reads descrip-
tions which for sustained and terrible power have yet to meet
their equals in prose. Despite the strict censure which certain
chapters deserve, La-Bas is worth while because it shows the
unconscious attraction that Huysmans felt for the art of life
which surrounded with a beneficent halo those dark and
bloody sinners whom he had resurrected in his study. He was
drawn to Catholicism "by its ecstatic and introspective art, its
haunting legends, and the beaming simplicity of its Lives of
the Saints."
A contemplative mind would discover a natural antithesis
to modernity in mediaeval life, which was artistic to the very
core; it having a philosophy wherein the degradation of man
was linked fast to his essential loftiness, and which dignified
the most trifling of good means by association with the Ulti-
mate Good; a science whose lens was the spirit, rendered
doubly powerful by mystic faith and wonder-working charity :
a poetry whose wings were safely strong in the spaces of eter-
nity. La-Bas proved once more the truth of Tertullian's
maxim : "The devil is God's monkey."
During the month of July, 1892, the Parisian papers stated
that Huysmans had resolved to become a Trappist; in reality,
however, he had only made a retreat at the Trappist monastery
of Notre-Dame d'Issigny and been reconciled with the Church
into which he had been born. At the time he was forty-five
years of age. Grateful for the divine grace of conversion, he
related his religious experiences in En Route, a deep and
powerful book which must be ranked with the greatest Cath-
olic literature of France. The story is to some extent auto-
biographical, but it must be understood that the fictitious
Durtal is not always identical with Huysmans : the personality
of the author is kept distinct from that of his creature, but
460 JORIS KARL HUYSMANS [July,
essentially the process of conversion, the action of grace re-
mains the same.
We are introduced to a lonely Durtal whose friends have
died. Their influence, however, has succeeded in keeping up
his interest in the Church to which he is further attracted by
the art and music of the mediaeval services, and by a strange
atavistic inclination due most probably to the prayers of cer-
tain members of his family who have entered monastic life.
Throughout the oscillations of his temperament the desire for
a new life stands firm, and he goes vigorously to work against
the temptations of the flesh which are exceedingly violent.
Naturally, he needs help, and this is supplied by the Abbe
Gevresin, a remarkable mystic priest. Durtal's constant at-
tempts at prayer lead him into various monastic chapels where
the beauty of sublime human sacrifice and the clarity of pris-
tine religious art, move him most deeply. It is impossible for
him to neglect, even momentarily, the fields that have been
opened to him by the discovery of the Christian tradition. He
reads with burning eyes the books of mystic writers and then
carries on his lonely battle with the desires and doubts that
assail him; finally, the day of decision is at hand. Trembling
with anxiety, he goes to the monastery for his retreat, and pre-
pares for the unburdening of his sins in the Sacrament of
Penance. Thereupon, Durtal passes through a harrowing
crisis of the kind described by St. John of the Cross as "The
Night of the Soul," but emerges in a holy and satisfying peace.
Sunshine floods his spirit; the every-day life of the abbey,
with its corporal rigors, its rule of silence and manual labor,
and its sonorous office chanted at break of day, appeal to
Durtal so strongly that he is loath to leave, loath to go out
from this blessed tranquillity into the disorder of life in Paris,
where the perception of the Divine is so much hidden by the
noise of the superficial.
Yes, En Route is in every way a book of tremendous, yet
delicate power. Appearing at a time when literary craft in
France had dissociated itself from religion or, in fact, any
reality at all, except the duel of the sexes, it seemed almost too
virile to be modern. The substance and spirit of Huysmans'
work had changed, but his art was the same: he still pos-
sessed the supreme ability to fit the word to the thing. Subtle
psychological situations are handled in this book with a strict
1921.] JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 461
and burning mastery, with an almost primitive lack of orna-
ment, and yet with resistless energy. En Route is alive with
verbal insight, with vivid poetry and unflagging descriptive
strength. The sincerity of the tale was so evident that Abbe
Meugnier declares that it performed the work of an army of
missionaries in bringing about conversions and revealing re-
ligious vocations.
All this is true, despite the fact that Huysmans made many
rash critical statements and carried with him remnants of his
earlier philosophy, bits of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which
appeared like dark spots against the bright canvas. En Route
had restated the Christian tradition so emphatically that it was
placed almost immediately beside the Confessions of St.
Augustine as one of the great records of the discovery of truth.
This judgment, it seems to me, remains altogether just.
Now a Catholic of the deepest conviction, it was necessary
for Huysmans to plunge himself into the beautiful mysteries
of religion, to fulfill as best he could the missionary duties of
a zealous man. Realizing as an artist how much of ancient
ecclesiastical symbolism had been lost to the world, how far
the love for the beauty of the Temple had deteriorated, he
determined to write a book dealing with the architecture,
sculpture and painting of the Middle Ages. La Cathedrale
was published in 1898, and the difference between this book
and those previously written by Huysmans was evident. It
seemed that he had tried to put all the majesty, the supple
symmetry, and the mystic symbolism of Our Lady's finest
cathedral, Chartres, into a great prose-poem, destined this time
for the millions rather than for the "dozen choice souls" hidden
in the mob. Rarely has prose so victoriously joined close ob-
servation with the ecstasy of phrase: these pages, so packed
with learning, objective detail and religious verity, move with
the elastic tread of a beautiful woman whose soul is afire and
whose heart is rich with the verve of life.
Durtal goes through these chapters, still melancholy, still
distrustful of himself, but quite in the background. Instead,
the Cathedral wakes to life: the forest-nave, shadowy with
leafy arches, glows with the rich color of a hundred flaming
windows and fills with ghostly crowds of kings and Saints,
Crusaders and pilgrims; bells boom in triumphant thunder
from the aged tower that, buckled in armor like some mystic
462 JORIS KARL HUYSMANS [July,
Roland, points a sword into a heaven that is close to earth; the
marvelous groups of stone, where Christ sits in judgment and
Mary is glorified, assume a consoling reality and speak the
beautiful old words which seem to have gone unheeded for so
long. Beneath, in the crypt, tapers burn at the Mass which is
again a Lux in Tenebris, and seems to have added to the dig-
nity of the Divine Sacrifice a wealth of martyrs' blood; for
here some of the earliest Christians in France were massacred
at the shrine of the Virgin Mother. Nowhere has the religious
imagination wrought greater wonders than here, and yet Huys-
mans does not lose himself in detail or forget the most impor-
tant point in all this wealth of color and beauty the high
spiritual conception of the whole.
Durtal had discovered finally the splendor of the Chris-
tian tradition. There had been the inferno of La-Bas, pre-
ceded by long, dismal wastes where his soul thirsted for some-
thing out of reach, something that had been forgotten. More-
over, throughout the experiences of En Route he had suffered
a purgatorio, a period of trial and torment that was lighted by
reflections of the star-lit beauty of heaven. Finally, the para-
dise of the artist had been reached, a domain of glory and
insight, where the Christian kneels to pray in temples which
visions of the Infinite Beauty have transformed into the ante-
rooms of eternity. La Cathedrale is not without its blemishes.
Huysmans was incapable of that fine, spontaneous generosity
which is the glory of the saints. But human art is always only
adumbrative of the ideal, and generous criticism will condone
the occasional errors of one whose hunger and delight have
resulted in so powerful a restatement of the Christian tradition.
Huysmans' later books do not, it seems to me, equal in
power and insight either En Route or La Cathedrale; he be-
came too critical, too much absorbed in reflection, to take into
sufficient account the audience for whom he was writing.
Still, everything was sincere, original and rigidly artistic in
form; if he had not written previously, these final volumes
would be sufficient basis for great fame. L'Oblat was con-
structed round the liturgy of the Church, that sublime litera-
ture so sadly neglected and yet so necessary for a complete
knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries. Sainte Lydwine de
Schiedam, the life of Huysmans' favorite Saint, showed pro-
found intimacy with the inner life of the expiatrice and reso-
1921.] JOR1S KARL HUYSMANS 463
lute attention to the harrowing details of her bodily condition.
It is not a pleasant book, but it attempts to prove the reality
of mysticism, and yet is the work not so much of a champion as
of a lover. The closely connected vignettes of Les Foules de
Lourdes give a very original view of the sacred grotto and the
devotions which are grouped around it. Occasionally, its real-
ism is sombre and hard; those parts of the book which deal
with the art of Lourdes are scathing in their denunciation of
ugliness. But there are really no words violent enough to up-
braid a people who surround the tabernacle of the God they
worship with trash fashioned in the market-place, for art is the
pantomime of the soul and not the product of molds in a fac-
tory. Once more Huysmans returned to the consoling antique
beauty, and in Trois Eglises et Trois Primitifs analyzed pene-
tratingly and with inner delight certain monuments of eccle-
siastical art. With this final service to the Tradition for which
he had lived, the artist's work was done. He was buried
simply in the habit of a Benedictine oblate, during the year
of Our Lord, 1907.
Sufficient time has passed to show that his writing is above
time, as Christianity is. Zola and the fleshy gods he wor-
shipped have departed, perhaps forever, like the fierce warrior
deities of old barbarian Europe. Movements such as Whist-
ler's "art for art's sake" and the Tolstoyan profession of "no
art for truth's sake," have grappled for the mastery, but the
beauty of the Christian tradition has been steadily revealed
and will eventually prevail.
Because art is so completely a product of the soul's medi-
tation on the Infinite Splendor which gleams faintly through
the material form, it must be the handmaiden of some religion.
It is nonsense to attribute the conversion of Huysmans to a
love for charming melodies and well-wrought chalices; but it
is profoundly true that the grace of God came to him through
art. He read in the finely executed designs of medievalism the
expression of an intense desire to burst the bonds of every-
thing merely superficial and earthy, and to rise purified to the
ultimates of existence. Here was mingled a boundless con-
tempt for life with a delight no less passionate the vision of
men who are certain that the banalities of everyday will end
in glory. Seen thus, Huysmans' return to the Church is an oc-
currence of miraculous simplicity. Therein lies its importance.
464 JORIS KARL HUYSMANS [July,
With great, almost terrible sincerity, he took his soul to the
Master and laid it down; he who had hated existence with
greater bitterness than Tolstoy and in greater loneliness walked
at last, submissive in the Communion of the Militant. In him
had been repeated the mystery of the miracle.
With all his strong virtues of thought and expression, this
novelist had various shortcomings which must be regretted.
Fundamentally he was the child of his age, a period of ennui,
and there is nothing darker than that listlessness. The great
laughter of the Middle Ages, the earth-song of men who had
banished fear to hell, had died with the Faith. The rooms of
thought, thick with the breath of Voltaire and Renan, stifled
the intellect. Perennial, unconquerable, man's desire for
happiness shook still shakes civilization with the rumble of
human discontent; people took vermouth and absinthe instead
of wine, just as they read Schopenhauer and Karl Marx in-
stead of the Gospel. Underneath, in constant, irresistible
rhythm, groaned the drums of war.
It is not surprising that Huysmans should have retained
some marks of the fever. His attitude toward woman, his ex-
cessive asceticism, his cruel derision of people whom some-
times he failed to understand, his lack of democratic sym-
pathy or brotherly love, are all ear-marks of egoism; but he
remembered always that he was a sinner, and there is no rea-
son for insisting that he should have been a saint. Moreover,
his style suffered from certain eccentricities, such as manner-
istic syntax and a delight in words which are often bizarre;
still, whatever he may lack in gracefulness and ease, Huys-
mans' remarkable sincerity, originality, and naturalness will
keep him a place as a master of style. The sum-total of his
influence has been very great. The great literary Crusade that
has followed him in France and England, has for its Grail the
revival of the Great Tradition. It is enough that Huysmans
should have been among the greatest ancestors of this glorious
company. We cannot afford to neglect either his labor or his
genius, for in a sublimely courageous sense he was a Captain
of the Wars.
RECREATION AND ITS RELATION TO DELINQUENCY.
BY JOHN O'CONNOR.
F wholesome recreation makes for physical,
moral and spiritual development, it tends to re-
duce delinquency, and the absence of wholesome
recreation or the presence of vicious forms of
recreation which make for the dissipation of the
natural and the supernatural life, tend to increase delin-
quency. If this be true, it follows that the Church, which is
concerned with the spiritual well-being of its children and with
their physical well-being, because of its reaction on the spir-
itual, should be interested in, should advance the cause of,
and should promote wholesome recreation.
In these days of reservations and interpretations one must
define and give boundaries to such a subject as recreation and
its relation to delinquency.
The term "recreation" as used here is to be construed as
synonymous with spare time activity. The normal day is now
divided into three periods eight hours for labor, eight hours
for sleep, and eight hours for recreation. It is with the latter
period, all of it and all of its activities, with which we now
have to do. Recreation is play in its broadest sense, in contra-
distinction to toil and to rest. It is very unfortunate that the
term recreation has come to be associated in the minds of
most people with organized play and athletics, and that the
greater part of the efforts to promote recreation has been con-
fined to children. The recreational efforts of the N. C. W. C.,
the Knights of Columbus, the Y. M. C. A., and the Jewish Wel-
fare Board in their work for soldiers during the War did
something to destroy this erroneous and mischievous mental
association. For the purpose of this article the particular
spare time activity of a scholar of sixty, be it card-playing or
golf, will be just as important as the game of "London Bridge"
for Johnny Jones and his Sister Sue, five and seven years of
age, respectively.
The studies which will be quoted will of necessity have
to do with the term "delinquency" in its general legal sense
VOL. CXIII. 30
466 RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY [July,
law breaking. As it is well-known that but a small part of the
offenders against the rights of persons and property are con-
fined in prisons and jails, and that the larger number, and
often the most dangerous enemies of society, are still in the
exercise of freedom, and, furthermore, as most of the insidious
crimes against self and society do not come within the scope
of the law, the term delinquency will be considered here in its
sociological, rather than in its legal, sense, and will include
sins of omission, as well as sins of commission. George B.
Mangold emphasizes this point when he wrote, "Delinquency
should be referred to as an attitude of mind and morals rather
than to the commission of some particular offence." 1
It is well to keep in mind that it is very difficult to apply
a yardstick to measure human actions, and that it is impos-
sible to give quantitative conclusions as to the extent to which
wholesome recreation reduces delinquency. On the other
hand, there are certain general conclusions which may be
drawn from the studies of the relation of recreation to delin-
quency.
At the conference of Social Work at Atlantic City in 1919,
Allen T. Burns reported the results of a study on the relation
of playgrounds to juvenile delinquency which was made in
Chicago in 1908, and which Mr. Burns had previously reported
in Charities and Commons for October 3, 1908. This study
brought out that the proportion of delinquency on the South
Side, Chicago, had been a practically constant figure from the
time the juvenile court of Cooks County had been established
until playgrounds were opened. This figure was forty per
cent of the entire juvenile delinquency of Chicago. It was
found that this figure had decreased in the two years of the
operation of the playgrounds. The South Side was then fur-
nishing only thirty-four per cent of the delinquents of Chicago
at a time and over a period when delinquency in Chicago had
increased twelve per cent. That meant, with reference to de-
linquency in Chicago as a whole, that delinquency on the
South Side had decreased twenty-nine per cent. The only new
factor that could be found on the South Side were the new
recreation facilities. For the purpose of this study, the delin-
quency figures for four districts of the South Side that had
1 Problems of Child Welfare, by George B. Mangold. New York: The Macmillan
Co. 1916.
1921.] RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY 467
been similarly and somewhat adequately provided with play-
grounds, were examined apart from the figures for the others,
and showed an average decrease of forty-four per cent. When
circles around these playgrounds, one-half mile in radius,
were drawn, it was found that there had been within that
radius an average decrease of twenty-eight and one-half per
cent. "It is easy to say," declared Mr. Burns, "that these play-
grounds had nothing to do with the case, but tested in three
different ways, while delinquency in Chicago was on an appre-
ciable increase, we found that there had been a decrease in
delinquency where a playground had been introduced."
The most intensive studies of recreation influences pub-
lished so far in this country, are three monographs of the
Cleveland Recreation Survey, made under the direction of the
Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1917,
namely, Delinquency and Spare Time, School Work and Spare
Time, and Wholesome Citizens and Spare Time. The first of
these, Delinquency and Spare Time, by Henry W. Thurston,
is a study of ninety-five cases of juvenile delinquency that
were, with respect to sex, age, character of offence, birthplace
of the fathers, and religious affiliations, typical of the whole
number of children who came into the court in Cleveland in
1916. This monograph also contains a study of twenty adult
delinquents, (twelve in dance halls and eight in municipal
courts) . In brief form, the important conclusions from the study
of these cases for the purpose of this article are as follows:
1. That spare time is not only an important factor in
the delinquency of three out of every four of the juvenile
delinquents studied, but frequently also in the delinquency
of young people and adults.
2. That the relation between delinquency and spare time
reduces to two kinds: (a) A relation so close as to amount in
many cases to an identity of habitual spare time activity with
delinquency; (b) A contributory relation of spare time activ-
ities to delinquency through knowledge of opportunity for and
temptation to delinquency.
This study, which on the negative side showed that recrea-
tion has a bearing and an important one on conduct, was
wisely supplemented by one employing the direct method of
ascertaining what part recreation plays in the development of
wholesome citizens.
468 RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY [July,
In this monograph, Wholesome Citizens and Spare Time,
by John L. Gillin, a study was made of one hundred and sixty
individuals representing roughly the local distribution of pop-
ulation with respect >> nationality, occupation, and sex." The
general conclusion of importance for our present purpose is
as follows: Spare time pursuits have either directly or in-
directly entered in as a decisive factor in the development of
these people. These activities have not been the only force
which wrought the marvel of wholesome personality, but they
have been more uniformly present than any other factor.
A study of Pittsburgh playgrounds, published in June,
1920, by the Citizens' Committee on City Plan, contains a map
showing juvenile delinquency from the records of the Juvenile
and Morals Court, 1919, each dot representing one case six to
twenty-one years of age. A glance at the map convinces one
that these cases are most numerous in those sections for which
the report recommends that playgrounds are most urgently
needed. The need, so far as the report is concerned, is based
on service to children living within fifteen minutes' walk of a
proposed playground. The report itself declares that the justi-
fication of so great a public undertaking as it recommends,
is its ultimate economy in the up-building of a citizenship
which shall be sound physically and morally. "Much of the
expense," it goes on to say, "of present correctional institu-
tions can in the future be saved by a proper recreation pro-
gramme today."
The studies that have been presented so far have been
inductive ones. It would not be of great value at this point
to outline the numerous deductive theories which go to sup-
port the general thesis that wholesome recreation reduces de-
linquency. The play instinct theory, the race epochs theory,
fatigue studies, the physical demands for relaxation, the theory
of vitality through recreation, the theory that the imaginative
powers, the sense that life possesses variety and color, are real-
ized most easily in moments of recreation. The theory that
social intercourse and companionship depend in a large meas-
ure for their highest development upon recreation, and
Freud's theory of sublimation are just a few of the hundred
and one theories, some of which must be true, that recreation
is a prime requisite for a wholesome and normal life.
It is not necessary to discuss even in a brief way the
1921.] RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY 469
results of the numerous studies of the relation of vicious forms
of recreation to delinquency. The facts are well known. The
reports of the various vice commissions in this country are
filled with evidence on the subject and the majority of court
cases, especially in which young people are involved, tell the
same story. It is the story of delinquency caused by suggestive
moving pictures, unregulated billiard rooms, degrading theat-
rical performances, vicious dance halls, and numerous other
forms of recreation, which thrive on what is, after all, a legiti-
mate craving. It is a good Catholic maxim that all the
things of the earth were given to man for his use, but not for
his abuse.
While on the subject of sordid and vicious forms of
recreation, it may be well at this point to quote another one
of the conclusions of the Cleveland study on Delinquency and
Spare Time, that effective prevention of delinquencies among
children, young men and women and adults, so far as these
delinquencies are due to the opportunities and temptations of
spare time activities, cannot be looked for until innocent
counter opportunities for spare time activities are adequate
both in variety and in quantity to the needs of the whole mass
of people. As already stated, if wholesome recreation reduces
delinquency and if vicious recreation increases delinquency,
it follows that Catholics should be interested in, should ad-
vance the cause of, and should promote wholesome recreation.
The Catholic body is interested in recreation because it
holds among the other rights inherent to living human sub-
jects the right to recreation "so that the worker may live as
a man, restore the strength expended in his labor, and have a
reasonable possibility of his development." 2
In addition to this general interest in recreation, the Cath-
olic workers in the United States should promote recreation
because the figures, at least for juvenile delinquency, show
that the number of Catholic delinquents is almost twice as
numerous as the total number of Catholics would justify.
In Allegheny Co., Pa., the Catholics form a little over one-third
of the population. In 1915, sixty-five per cent of the children
coming before the Juvenile Court were Catholic; in 1916,
fifty-five per cent; in 1917, forty-nine per cent, and in 1918,
A Primer of Social Science, by the Rt. Rev. Henry Parkinson. London: P. S.
King & Co., Ltd.
470 RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY [July,
fifty-five and eight-tenths per cent. There are many ways of
explaining this condition; one will be suggested here. The
parents of a great many of the children who come into the
Juvenile Courts are immigrants. To these people the Cath-
olic Church has been a very vital thing the most vital in
their lives. When Catholic workers do not help them in adapt-
ing their lives to the new civilization in which they find them-
selves, they, and especially their children, flounder. Catholic
workers do not lead them in channels of recreation. Today
we do not contribute as much in proportion to the total
recreation activities of a community as we did thirty years
ago.
Those who say that recreation is not the business of
the Catholic body must be told that it always has been and
always must be. Even though it had not been; souls are at
stake and the dispensation on methods of bringing about sal-
vation has not been closed.
How can we best promote this necessary work of our
Catholic inheritance? In the first place, we can by deed, as
well as by word, strengthen family life in the home. Joseph
Lee said naively that the first requisite for the play of a little
child is a mother, and the next is a home. The importance
of home recreation is one of the facts brought out in one of
the Cleveland recreation studies. It states that with both men
and women the recreation habits formed early in life are the
habits on which their later recreational life depends.
Although later all the activities of childhood were shown to
have dropped out of the lives of the adults in the study, and
even those that were left showed a lowered intensity when
new activities came to take the places of those that had
lapsed.
Every time Catholics promote or join in movements for a
living wage, shorter hours of work and good housing, they are
contributing to the up-building of family life and to one of the
important features of modern family life recreation. At the
same time they are assisting in removing other causes of delin-
quency, for it is not the premise of this article to hold that the
absence of recreation is the only cause of delinquency. The
Catholic body through its social agencies should help to work
out a consistent programme to stimulate the interest of par-
ents and other adults in a scheme of home recreation.
1921.] RECREATION AND DELINQUENCY 471
In the second place, Catholics should cooperate in a very
definite way in promoting community recreation. However
it may be lamented, most people, especially in modern cities,
are forced to find their recreation outside the walls of their
homes. Recreation has become a recognized municipal func-
tion. The complexities of city life, the congestion of popula-
tion, the opportunities and incentives for perversion of child-
ish and youthful activities into unwholesome channels, all
these make imperative a general and complete municipal pro-
gramme with which the Catholic body alone cannot compete.
Our teachers and leaders have framed such a programme.
We should cooperate with other forces in the community and
bring about its realization, and always be on guard to see
that the programme is so carried out that it will make for
the development of wholesome citizens.
At this point it may be appropriate to suggest that the
Catholic social agencies should aid in stamping out in the
community vicious forms of recreation, and assist in throwing
all necessary safeguards about commercial forms of recrea-
tion.
In the third place, Catholics should promote a definite
form of recreation to meet the peculiar needs of Catholic
people. The development of this work is the most important
and pressing of the social functions of Catholics in the
United States. Catholicism gave being long ago to a type of
civilization which is native to itself. That type which flour-
ished in Europe has never been transplanted to this country.
It is a necessary requisite for the full development of the
Church. Thousands of souls remain apart from her because
they have looked in vain for such a civilization or culture sur-
rounding the Church in America.
Catholic culture can be developed to a high degree through
a well planned and well directed recreational programme in
parish halls and community houses.
The Church has a spiritual treasury. People do not al-
ways recall that she also has a temporal one which derives
its possessions in a mystical way from the spiritual. This
temporal treasury through a wise and democratic distribution
of its wealth which consists of the influence of Catholic art,
literature, music and science, can make for a transforming in-
fluence in the life of America. That treasury can, and should,
472 A PRESENT-DAY SAINT [July,
be opened to the people that they may claim the things new
and old which are their inheritance and of which, to their
great detriment, they have been deprived.
Through recreation, which has come to occupy so im-
portant a place in life, Catholics may carry on, on the one
hand, a preventive work, through decreasing delinquency,
and on the other hand, a constructive work, through the de-
velopment of a culture which will carry to all a new and com-
pelling evidence of her divine origin.
A PRESENT-DAY SAINT.
BY L. A. WALLINGFORD.
O FRIEND, with the earnest eyes! When we meet in life's busy
ways,
There's power in your glance and smile to lighten my heart for
days.
You may greet me trivial- wise, just passing the time of day,
But I feel the touch of your spirit, whatever your lips may say.
Why is it, friend of mine, that courage and strength and cheer,
Revivify my soul whenever you are near?
The secret I've discovered : Back of your glance and smile,
A soul in touch with God, prays blessings all the while.
Suclf sacred office this, God's almoner to be,
At times the artist's nimbus around your head I see.
WHY GOD BECAME MAN.
BY LESLIE J. WALKER, S.J., M.A.
II.
MAN'S DESTINY AND FALL.
HERE are two ways in which a man may express
himself. He may bring forth a child, born to his
image and likeness, or he may express himself
by creating imaginary characters in an imaginary
setting as in literature and art. The second is the
feebler way, for in it man expresses himself in a material he
has in no way produced, and expresses withal not so much
himself as what he has learned from experience.
The first mode of self-expression is realized eternally in
God, first in the generation of the Son by the Father, and,
finally, by the procession from these two of the Spirit of Love.
Out of unity there arises distinction, personal and real; and
then, in a further unity, which also is personal and real, what
was distinguished again becomes one. Not that this is a time-
process, but that thus we can best set forth the relations be-
tween the three divine Persons. The whole is eternally com-
plete. Process in God eternally is.
In the Spirit the order of divine procession is eternally
consummated. Beyond the three divine Persons, therefore,
there is neither need of any other, nor is any other divine
person possible without destroying (per impossibile) the very
nature of God. If then there are to be other persons besides
the Divine Three, they must be created persons, i. e., persons
who proceed from and depend upon God, but yet are not
God. Their relation to God may be analogous to that of the
Second and Third Persons in God, but their nature will not
be the same. They will not proceed from God necessarily;
and so will not be self-subsistent, or such that they could not
"not-be." Neither at the outset can they share immediately,
and to the full, in the Divine Experience; for in that case they
would be divine persons, since they would share in that which
474 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
is proper to the Son and the Spirit. Created persons are not
only imperfect in their mode of existence, in that they need not
exist; but also they are imperfect in their nature: there is
something that they lack.
On the other hand, it is inconceivable that persons should
be created by God except for the purpose of sharing in some
way in the Divine Experience. For what is a person but one
who shares intelligently in the experience of another without
losing his own individuality? And what experience is there
to share, in the last resort, except that of God. God does not
create out of necessity: He creates out of love. Thought must
express itself; experience must be shared; good must diffuse
itself. But this it has already done to the full in the Triple
Personality of God. Any further diffusion of good can only
be made freely, out of sheer spontaneity and love; for there is
no one to whom God can express Himself, no one with whom
His Experience can be shared unless He creates. On the other
hand, if God does create, though what is created must of
necessity be other than God, and so without divine perfec-
tions or divine experience, it will not be impossible that the
creature should acquire such experience and with it perfec-
tion. On the contrary, it would be characteristic of God, Who
is Goodness existent, that such should be the destiny of those
for whose sake creation is to be.
If this be so, evolution or process is in some sense essen-
tial to a created universe, no less than is personality. What-
ever else God creates, if He creates at all, He must at any rate
create persons, imperfect at first, but capable of development
through experience. No person will have that full and imme-
diate knowledge and enjoyment of God which is his ultimate
destiny; but each will have some knowledge of God, or
will be capable of acquiring it and also of growing in it, until
at length he be fitted to share in the Divine Experience of the
Self -existent Three.
It may be that the way to perfect happiness in the case of
the angels is short: that there is one supreme act of love and
after it beatitude eternal. This is what St. Thomas teaches.
None the less he insists also on process. The angels do not see
God naturally. They know Him by the effects which His ac-
tion produces, and must grow in that knowledge. A purifica-
tion must take place before they have clarity of vision. They
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 475
need grace, and must prepare themselves to receive it. Nay,
further, 1 grace and its development in the angelic order are
compared to the "seminal nature" of the physical order, out of
which evolve plants and animals.
All created persons must evolve, i. e., must start with a
capacity, the purpose of which can be realized only through a
time-process. They must also evolve in conjunction one with
the other. This is evident in the case of man, whose develop-
ment is so largely due to education, environment, and to the
tradition of his ancestors. But it is true also of a world of
pure spirits. To no creature can God be present at the outset
as the immediate object of his experience; for in that case he
would have the fullest experience of God of which he was
capable, and so would be neither subject to development, nor
would be conscious of himself as a mere creature. Yet expe-
rience is always experience of what is other than oneself.
There is such a thing as self-knowledge; but it arises in and
through the knowledge which one has of another, who is dis-
tinct from oneself. Hence, though it is commonly taught that
the angels know God through the image of Him which is im-
pressed in their very nature, in order that this image should
become conscious, it is necessary that they should have expe-
rience of another; and this other cannot in the first instance
be God. Development with all created persons, angelic or
human, is essentially a social development. Angels, like men,
come to know themselves simul cum aliis, together with others,
as St. Thomas says. They "illuminate" or "manifest truth"
one to another, and by means of this intercourse one with
another make progress in the knowledge of God.
There are then two types of universe. In the one type all
creatures will be persons, each manifesting in some degree
God, and each destined to progress in the knowledge of God,
until he be fitted to enter the society of God; in the other type,
the human type, some creatures will not be personal, but will
manifest God on a lower level, and so will serve merely as
means to the end for which persons have been called into
being. But each type of universe will be social in character,
development taking place in each case through a mutual expe-
rience, which in the one case is direct, but in the other is ex-
pressed by means of a physical environment.
i Snraina, q. B2, a. 3.
476 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
Both types of universe will, therefore, involve certain pri-
mary duties on the part of the persons thus called into being;
namely that each should seek at once to realize his own des-
tiny and to help his neighbors to realize theirs; and, further,
that no person (or thing) should become an end in itself to be
sought for its own sake, either by itself or by another. The
two commandments which Christianity enunciates as the first
principles of all moral life, in reality flow from the very nature
of God as manifest in creation. Creation is meaningless ex-
cept as the expression of God to persons, who come into being
as the product of His creative act, and who exist that they
may grow in the knowledge and love of God until at length
He shall communicate to them the beatific vision, for which
He creates them and in which alone they can find rest. Love
flows from knowledge, and prompts to further knowledge. It
is, therefore, the link which at once unites the created person
to his Creator, and which tends to draw him yet closer to his
Creator.
The First Commandment is that we love God.
The Second concerns our neighbor.
Created persons must grow in the knowledge of God in
conjunction one with another, as each manifests God progress-
ively more and more perfectly. But from knowledge, once
again, love flows, linking yet more each to the other, as love
grows. Each person is a means to the other's end; yet not
merely a means; for each has the same end, which he can at-
tain only in cooperation with his neighbor. Therefore, should
we love one another, in God and on account of God, Who is
manifest in each of us; and again, should do unto others as
we would that they should do unto us. The commandment
that we love one another is no mere commandment. Neither
are the prohibitions of selfishness, greed, robbery, rape, mur-
der, and of the exploitation of our neighbor, or the using of
him as an object whereby to gratify our passions, mere prohi-
bitions. The good of the one and the evil of the other type of
action, follows from the very fact that we are a society of
persons, each with the same destiny, which can be attained
only in and through social action.
The need of humility, and of its counterpart, confidence in
God, also flows from the very nature of the creature. Of him-
self, he is nothing, and can do nothing; but is wholly depend-
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 477
ent upon God, and in a secondary way upon his neighbor. If
the creature claim anything as his very own, he is denying
fact, and is thus far setting up himself as the existent. In
other words, he would become as God, not in the way in which
the creature can become as God, but by an act of usurpation
and revolt. To become as God, he must needs deny himself,
z. e. t must recognize that of his own right he possesses nothing
and in his own power can do nothing. He can only act as
God acts through him. He can only develop in proportion as
he receives what as yet he has not received. Therefore, if he
would realize his sublime destiny, he must needs have on the
one hand, humility, and, on the other hand, confidence in God,
Who has created him expressly that in him this destiny may
be realized.
The purpose for which all created persons exist, is that
ultimately they may have experience of God as He is. But as
yet they have not this experience; nor does any creature mani-
fest God in this perfect way. Therefore, there are no crea-
tures, personal or impersonal, which can so attract persons,
when in their normal state, that they must of necessity suc-
cumb to this attractiveness. In a word, to be personal is also
to be free. There is nothing short of the Infinite, which can
compel our assent.
None the less, we can give our assent, can contemplate an
object till it fascinates us, can yield to a purpose till at length
it comes to dominate our lives.
God, Whom we know in part only, is present to us as such
an object. The realization of His Will and our destiny is one
of the purposes which may dominate our lives. But there are
other objects, which also we may seek; other purposes which
also we may take as our ultimate aim. For God we may sub-
stitute the creature. It follows that the created person may
fail to realize the destiny for which he was created.
The possibility of evil is inherent in the very nature of a
created universe.
On the other hand, it would not seem necessarily to fol-
low that, because evil is a possibility, it must needs be a fact.
God, it is commonly supposed, could have created a universe
in which all persons ultimately did de facto realize their des-
tiny, though freely. And if this be so, and we use the term
"universe" in the restricted sense of an inhabited world, or
478 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
a group of persons comparatively isolated, God may have
created such universes.
But is it quite certain that an all-good universe is a pos-
sibility? The persons for whom such a universe exists will
be wholly dependent upon God. Whatever they are and pos-
sess, they will have received from Him; and in and through
Him all development will take place. But, also, they will be
free, free to develop in this or that direction according as they
select this or that object or aim. They can, if they choose,
grow in holiness; but, to do so, they must freely ask, and
freely accept, from God the wherewithal to grow in holiness.
For to grow in holiness is to grow in the knowledge and love
of God, and hence involves the recognition at once of God as
the existent Being from Whom all good flows, and of ourselves
as wholly dependent upon Him and as mere nothingness apart
from Him. But if all persons did this, if all grew steadily in
knowledge and grace, might not such beings come to the con-
clusion that this growth was inevitable, attribute it to their
own inherent power, and so imagine that of themselves they
could realize their destiny. And, if such were their case, how
could they recognize their own nothingness, how grasp their
dependence on God, how come to behave as free persons, pos-
tulating of God that which of themselves they had not, nor of
themselves could acquire?
It seems to me that in an all-good universe, created per-
sons could recognize neither their freedom nor yet their de-
pendence upon God, and so could not receive from God what
must be freely asked, even as freely it is given. Sin is not a
necessity; and yet, if there were no sin, how should we recog-
nize virtue? If there were no downward path, how could we
freely choose the upward? If no person ever chose the crea-
ture in preference to the Creator, how should we ever come to
recognize that the choice of God as our ultimate end is a
voluntary choice, or that in realizing the destiny for which He
has created us, we are no mere automata, but rational beings,
who freely submit to His power? If all the parts of a system
move uniformly at the same rate and in the same direction,
motion becomes imperceptible to a person within the system,
as it is in a lift or a smooth-running train with closed windows.
The same law would seem to apply to the spiritual order.
Movement to be recognized must be diverse both in rate and
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 479
direction; and, unless movement is recognized, it is impossible
to grow consciously in the knowledge of God.
If our argument be valid, a created universe must inevit-
ably contain an element of evil; not because God's power is
limited this is sheer nonsense, for there is nothing that can
limit God's power : He alone is but because of the very nature
of a created universe. Such a universe can only exist as the
manifestation of God to persons destined to know him fully,
but at the outset possessing but a partial and mediate knowl-
edge. Such persons will be free to realize or not to realize
their destiny; and only through freedom can realize it, since,
recognizing their dependence upon God, they must freely seek
from Him divine cooperation in their spiritual development.
Yet, if all developed in the same direction, if there were no
strife, no failure, no turning aside or turning back, it is, to say
the least, doubtful whether one could become aware of an
alternative to the fulfillment of this divinely appointed des-
tiny; in which case it would be impossible to choose freely the
one alternative rather than the other.
But if moral evil be inevitable in a created universe, in
some sense "damnation" also must be inevitable. For "dam-
nation" is but the outcome of moral evil, the judgment which
inevitably follows upon it. In place of God, the creature is
chosen as the ultimate goal which is to give us complete satis-
faction; and this satisfaction the creature can never give, nor
is willing to give, since itself craves a complete satisfaction
which the other cannot offer it. Damnation is destiny un-
realized, purpose unfulfilled; and it begins so soon as the crea-
ture is deliberately preferred to the Creator. That some crea-
tures may vacillate, and, by altering their decisions, escape per-
petual damnation, does not alter the fact, that in deliberately
substituting the creature in place of the Creator, ipso facto,
they choose torment, and stand self-condemned. Neither
moral evil nor damnation is necessary, for both suppose an
act of free choice. But, if there is to be a created universe,
both the one and the other are inevitable, except with crea-
tures that are capable of repentance.
If this be so, the problem of evil which usually inquires
whether it be moral for God to create a universe in which
there is evil, is reduced to an inquiry as to whether it be
moral for God to create. Even if an all-good universe be pos-
480 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
sible, it is irrelevant to the problem in hand. For in an all-
good universe not only do all persons progress steadily toward
the same end, but each helps the other to attain this end.
Whereas, if there be evil, some persons go in one direction,
some in another; and, with respect to their common destiny,
some help, others hinder, some lead their companions upward,
others drag them down. Life in such a universe is no mere
story of continuous development. It involves conflict, the
overcoming of obstacles, victory over something that resists;
and so is of a radically different type from that which would
obtain in a universe in which all worked smoothly and every-
one was good. Even if an all-good universe be possible, then,
nay, even if actually it exist, the possibility of the other type
of universe remains, and with it the problem of whether or
not it be moral for God to call it into being.
The problem of evil, rightly stated, is not the problem of
deciding whether God be justified in preferring a partly-evil
to an all-good universe, for of the latter we do not know even
whether it be possible. It is the problem of justifying from
our human point of view God's action in creating a universe
in which successes are mingled inextricably with failures, and
there is strife between evil and good.
If we consider the universe from this point of view, there
is no doubt as to the first answer we must give. From the
point of view of the successes it will be better that the uni-
verse should exist, and from the point of view of the failures,
better that it should not exist. But what of the successes and
failures, considered as one group, supposing, that is, that it be
legitimate so to consider them. If on the Benthamite prin-
ciple we count happinesses and miseries as units, the answer
is still clear. It will depend upon the number of the "saved"
as compared with the number of the "lost." But, in the first
place, we know not the fate of any human soul, unless, per-
haps, that of Judas. And, in the second place, the happiness
of the "saved" consists in the contemplation of God, Who is
infinite; whereas the pain of the "damned" consists in the loss
of God, for Whom each has substituted a creature- world
which evokes his desires, but being finite never can satisfy
them. Each obtains that which he seeks, but the one who has
sought wrongly, against his better judgment, obtains it to his
perpetual undoing. His loss is a self-inflicted loss, to which
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 481
he was in no wise destined by God, and which he could have
avoided, if he would.
Imagine now that God is contemplating the creation of a
universe. All possible stories, setting forth all possible char-
acters and all possible combinations of characters lie open
before Him. Amongst them are some which contain failures
as well as successes, the successes bound up with the failures
in such a way that these stories would be of a different type if
there were no failures in them. Is God, for the sake of the
failures, voluntary failures, to abstain from giving reality to
a story in which others will gain an infinite success? Or is
He, for the sake of these successes of infinite value, to allow
failures to happen which will not be infinite except in the
sense of an infinite gain that, for some, will be permanently
lost?
All things considered, there would hardly seem to be any
doubt as to the answer. Our viewpoint is partial and finite.
We know not all possible worlds, nor whether there be other
worlds than ours, nor yet how many in our world attain their
destiny, and how many fail so to do. But God being what
He is, a Trinity of Persons, eternally perfect and eternally one
in nature and experience, and the creature being essentially
other than God; a being who, if personal, must realize what
he is and what is his end, and must consciously make progress
towards it it does seem at least highly probable that our
type of universe is the only possible type, much as it might
vary in detail; and that, since in it all can attain their end if
they will, and many do attain it, it is better that it should exist
rather than not exist.
In any case, our type of universe does exist. The Being
Who is, and is eternally, was not content to express Himself
through the processions which are eternally realized in the
Son and the Spirit. He has also expressed Himself ad extra
for the benefit of persons, whom by an eternal act He calls
into being. We do not solve the problem of evil by denying
that evil exists. Neither do we solve it by denying that God
exists. Evil is a fact, and I think an inevitable fact, if there
was to be creation at all. What we have to do is to learn how
God solves the problem that arises from it.
But first let us look at the universe which God has created.
In it are realized precisely those features which we have de-
VOL. cxni. 31
482 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
duced as possible if the God in Whom Christians believe was
to express Himself by way of creation. There are two classes
of persons, so faith teaches us angels and men, each member
of each class created with a view to his sharing ultimately in
the infinite experience of God. But at the outset man, of whom
alone we have immediate knowledge, is merely the centre of a
finite experience. And this constantly changes and evolves, as
the objects of which he has experience change their relations
one towards another, or as fresh objects enter his experience
or present objects disappear. Of the whole of the time-series
God alone is conscious : we live in it, and so are aware of but
a part. But each part is either itself a centre of experience or
else a centre of multiform relationship, and so manifests God.
He is manifest also in the whole. And though the part may
evoke in us affection and desire; it can never satisfy this
desire, unless it leads us on to Him Who in it dwells and
through it operates. Gradually, we are driven from the uni-
verse to its intelligent Source, from the creature to the Spirit
that creates.
Salvation is a process, a process of knowledge, from which
flow love and desire. But it is also essentially a process in
which others cooperate. We grow in holiness or wickedness
together. This is true of the angels, no less than of men. To
them also extends the duty of helping one another, and of
helping us; and by them as by us this duty may be, has been,
neglected: there are devils. But especially does the principle
of social interaction for growth or decadence apply to those
persons who have bodies.
The angels presumably have immediate experience of one
another and of us. We have not. For it is of the essence of a
soul that it should organize and animate a material body,
through which alone in this life at any rate it can either
have experience of, or operate upon, its environment. Conse-
quently, of other souls, and also of the angels and of God,
we can have only a mediate experience, through their action
upon us. None the less, human beings are closely linked to-
gether. For we not only interact, and through interaction
commune one with the other in knowledge and love; but also
we inherit one from the other inherit the instincts and capac-
ities with which our bodies are endowed; inherit also expe-
rience the experience of the past which is handed down in
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 483
writing and tradition. If the angels can develop only socially
through an experience towards which all contribute, still more
thorough-going is the social character of our development, in
which heredity plays a part and the product of experience ac-
cumulates but slowly as generation succeeds generation.
Humanity is one in the sense that all its members are de-
rived from a common stock, all have the same fundamental
nature, all have experience of a world in which the same fun-
damental features are continuously manifest, all have the
same destiny, which each can realize if he wills. It is one also
in the sense that the thought and behavior of each is bound up
with that of his neighbor, and in part is determined by the
thought and behavior of the past. In all this personality,
procession from an origin, inter-relationship, experience, so-
ciety man manifests God.
But humanity is not one in the sense that all progress
steadily towards the end for which man came into being.
Many men, perhaps most men, have not the least notion why
they exist. They have a vague idea of God, and a still vaguer
idea of survival; but what God is, what He wants of them,
what survival signifies or how their true destiny may be at-
tained, they neither know nor care. It is the creature that
they seek. Science and civilization are esteemed; but they are
esteemed either for their own sake or for the creature com-
forts which they bring. And there are masses of men who do
not even rise thus high, but are content with the life of an
automaton and the pleasures of an animal.
Plainly there are two tendencies in the world, one towards
God and the happiness of a divine experience, and the other
towards anything but God. What will be the ultimate conse-
quence in any individual case we know not; but we do know
whither each tendency leads, and that as a man lives, so in
all probability will he die. The direction of one's life one
determines for oneself while yet one shares in the time-
process. When one passes beyond the time-process, the goal
towards which one has directed oneself is attained and one's
tendencies are realized for better or for worse. Inevitably,
also, there is conflict. Humanity is divided against itself, and
the heart of the individual is torn by these conflicting ten-
dencies.
The strife that began in the angelic world is reflected in
484 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
this, and is further reflected in the physical environment in
which the human race has evolved. Strife in some sense or
other is characteristic of the whole of creation. Everywhere
is there a dual tendency: gravitation and centrifugal force,
attraction and repulsion, integration and disintegration, growth
and decay; and in the animal world strife between species,
and sometimes within them. Contradiction and conflict, if
not inevitable in all creation, is certainly a deep-rooted char-
acteristic of all the creation which we know, and is integral to
life and development.
On the other hand, there is in the animal world compara-
tively little conflict between members of the same species.
The instincts of the individual are subordinate to those of the
herd. It is the group that seeks to persevere in being and to
realize the tendencies which characterize it. It does so by
means of its members, but these, as a rule, work in conjunc-
tion one with the other, rather than at each other's expense.
Each lives, not for itself only, but for the sake of the species
to which it belongs. It is a different or a lower species that is
treated as a mere means to this end. The social principle,
manifesting the nature of God, is in the animal kingdom, real-
ized instinctively.
With man just the contrary is the case. His conflict is
chiefly with members of his own species. Nation wars with
nation, class with class, individual with individual. And the
reason is that, ignoring their destiny, men seek creatures for
their own sake, so that of the kinds that are fancied, there are
not enough to go round. Creatures, whether human or not,
are treated by man not as means, but as ends; and so attached
may he become to this or that creature, that to the gaining of
it he will devote his whole life, and sacrifice all else that he
possesses. As a consequence, there appears amongst men a
lack of self-control, a passionate violence, an intensity of
greed, a refinement of cruelty, even against his own kin, that
in the animal world is unknown.
If man be by nature the most noble of the animals, of a
surety has he fallen; for, as he is known to us, alike in expe-
rience and in history, he is in some respects far below the
lowest. He still retains his intellectual superiority; but often
enough it does but subserve his passions. Born that he ma>
know and enjoy God, he becomes the slave of some particular
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 485
instinct in a way that in the animal world finds no parallel.
Man alone seeks pleasure for its own sake, or sex for the sake
of pleasure, or will ruthlessly rob his fellows that he may pos-
sess more, or will enslave his own kinsfolk that he may enjoy
power. Man, alone of the animals, has an intelligence fitted
to know God, and precisely because this is so, man, alone of
the animals, can make a god of a creature of his sex, of his
belly, of himself, or of some one of his many ideas.
Whence comes this degradation, so common amongst us,
and into which all of us are conscious that we could fall? The
psycho-analyst attributes it to a loss, to a loss of control over
our instincts, which has occurred in the course of man's evo-
lution, and from which has resulted a split between the con-
scious and the sub-conscious selves. Science, in short, has re-
discovered the Fall; and this just at the moment when emi-
nent clerics, engrossed in textbooks of twenty years ago, have
discovered that science does not admit a fall, and would ac-
commodate their faith to their science! So prone are we to
idolize that, rather than accept divine revelation, we would
make an idol of a scientific theory. So far have we fallen that,
where we do not worship the creatures which God has made,
we must needs worship the creatures of intelligence.
The proudest of God's creatures has unquestionably fallen.
But, if we would understand the full significance of the
Church's doctrine in this matter, we must remember that the
human race is not only a fallen race, but a falling race a
race whose characteristic it is to fall, and afterwards, in some
fashion, to repent. If we overlook this fact, we shall miss the
whole point of the Church's teaching with respect both to the
Fall and to the Redemption.
In both cases the race is envisaged, as embodied in the
one case in Adam, and in the other case in Christ. In Adam we
fell and in Christ we are redeemed, because both Adam and
Christ are one with the whole of humanity. The Church, so
to speak, in preaching this doctrine, looks at things from God's
point of view, from the point of view of one who sees the
whole, and acts with a view to the whole.
Adam's destiny was our destiny. How his body came to
be matters little, and the Councils of the Church have not pro-
nounced on the subject. But it does matter that he was created
or "constituted" in grace; that into his animal body God
486 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [July,
breathed the spirit of life, of life supernatural. For thereby
man's destiny is indicated. He came into being for a purpose,
and with the capacity of fulfilling that purpose. He was not
a mere animal, but a person, with an animal body to assist in
the development of his personality. And, as a person, he had
experience which would eventually, under divine action, have
become merged in a divine experience. So long as he re-
mained in God's grace, he also had control over himself. In-
stinct, sense, intelligence, will, worked harmoniously together
towards the end for which life had been given. There was no
lust of the flesh against the spirit, no war of the subconscious
with the conscious, no disease; and, consequently, except for
sin Adam's sin, which also was a racial sin there would
have been no death.
But Adam did sin, and in him we also sinned. For Adam
was the embodiment of our race, which is a sinful race,* a race
of whose members it is characteristic that they should reject
God's grace and spurn the destiny for which they were created.
In Adam's body our bodies were potentially contained, and in
his sinful act our sins were foreshadowed. With him we form
one race, one whole. Therefore, his sin was our sin, and his
loss our loss also. God sees the whole, and acts accordingly.
It is plain that something has gone wrong. There should
at least be harmony in our own bodies and peace amongst our
own folk; but instead there is continual strife. Disease and
division are rampant in the mental and the social, no less than
in the physical order, and when passion or greed gets the
better of us, there is no limit to the degradation into which
intelligent beings may fall.
Science admits the fact; acknowledges that, as compared
with the lower animals, man is abnormal in his behavior; and
accounts for this by saying that somewhere in the course of
evolution a something or other must have been lost. But the
Church alone explains in what the loss consists or how it came
about.
It is of the essence of sin, that in it man willfully ignores
the destiny for which he came into being, and seeks something
else in its stead. Thereby he becomes dominated by the lower,
and shuts out from himself the influence of the higher. It is
also of the essence of sin, as of all human action, that it
should affect not the individual orlv. h^t th?. r^c^ to
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 487
belongs. Had Adam not sinned, nor any of our forefathers,
we should not be as we are, prone to seek the creature in
place of the Creator, and, fascinated by the creature, to be-
come ultimately its slave. And yet it was inevitable that it
should be so; for thus only can man learn the worthlessness
of creatures or discover his own nothingness, and, discovering
it, turn to God with that submissiveness which alone can
render it possible for his destiny to be realized, in God and
through God, yet without detriment to his personality or his
freedom. Life is what it is, pain mingled with pleasure, evil
with good, that man may learn from it, without becoming at-
tached to it as to something ultimate and final. The universe
exists for man's sake, and as the expression of God's love, but
only that man may transcend it, and so pass from the partial
and mediate experience with which he begins, to the full and
immediate experience for which he has come into being.
That we should know of the ideal which momentarily was
realized in our first parents, is of no small value to us, since
thereby we are reminded that our destiny is not what it seems
to be a life of mingled pleasure and pain, ending in death,
but a life that shall be wholly good and eternally rich in
knowledge and happiness and love. It is also of value that
we should experience the consequences of the Fall, painful
as they may be, for thus only can we learn our own nothing-
ness, or the vanity of creatures, or the power that is needed,
if we would transcend their finitude and attain to that Expe-
rience to which they perpetually point. But if this we would
do, we must learn also how He works for our redemption, and
has worked through all time in that racial whole of which we
are the present embodiment and momentary expression.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
WOMAN OF MISTS, IRELAND.
BY KATHRYN WHITE RYAN.
Tis tired you might be, woman!
(And she walking by the lonely shore
Where the curlews were crying.)
' 'Tis the long miles I have yet to travel
And the gray rocks still to be climbing."
There's the shadow of many sorrows
Under your eyes, woman;
And the mystery of a long endurance.
"The mother of many sons am I and of many daughters.
But my daughters come clutching my knees
The wild hair of them falling
And they with the sob of the parting sea in their hearts.
And my strong sons wander away from me ...
Aye! a woman broken in dreams that am I!"
And where now might you be journeying, Mother?
The wind lashing the sea
And it weaving its mist-shroud?
There's a spring in your step that stops not
And a new light on your face surely.
"On the far side of those rocks I'll be climbing
Where thorns shall bloody the hands of me
'Tis my bog lands fertile with blossom I'm seeing,
My sons at the plow again,
My green hills studded once more with white houses
The plump white houses chimney nippled red
Like glad young mothers. . . ."
Then a mist whirled up and around her,
The angry sea thudded
It washing her words away
As it washes away the sea-shells.
SOME LITERARY ASPECTS OF THE AMERICAN CAPITAL.
BY MARGARET B. DOWNING.
CITY by a winding river where artistic genius
has wooed natural beauty so subtly that the
massed buildings seem merely incidental to
parks, gardens and tree-arched avenues, would
not generally be accepted as fruitful soil for a
great and virile literature. From the dim past, where con-
flicts of the natural forces are written in eruptions of rock and
lava, Washington City can display nothing ruder than the
picturesque brown stone formations along Rock Creek and
the lesser waterways and the splendid palisades of the upper
Potomac. Within the city, no smoky chimneys nor clang of
mechanical industry disturbs the smug content of a citizenry
possessing a plenitude of good things through little effort or
self-sacrifice. It is the court of the nation, hence its charm of
environment. It is the camp of the nation, and to aesthetic
grace has been added military cleanliness and order. As Vis-
count Bryce noted, in that admirable essay on the American
Capital, published in the National Geographical Magazine,
"it lives by the gospel of beauty and the lighter charms of life
veneer its sterner and more prosaic aspects."
Washington, in literature, is a larger theme than it would
seem at first glance. If the Library of Congress were to collect
into book form all the titles under "Washington, D. C.,"
listed on its indices, more than one hundred compactly printed
octavo pages would be required. A multitude of books does
not necessarily imply the making of literature. But in the
books which originated in the Capital City, which have used
it as a subject, or which represent the works of resident
authors, may be found some of the masterpieces of American
letters. A fascinating literary aspect relates to writings of
aliens sojourning within the city through varying periods.
"Since Cadmus sowed the dragons' teeth" and Guten-
berg's later industry rendered the making of books an easy
task, there has not existed on the earth's surface a busier
mart than the Government printery at Washington. Admit-
490 SOME LITERARY ASPECTS [July,
tedly, modern production in printing there reaches the apex..
Ninety-eight per cent of the books which originate in the Cap-
ital are official documents, and form part of the output in
the accident of being the seat of government. Yet even here
are masterpieces, portions of American letters which are in-
tegral of its history, just as the immortal eloquence of the
great Cicero or the flaming Demosthenes is as much a part of
Latin and Greek literature as the poets or philosophers. From
the Government Printing Office, the resounding message to
the ages, the Gettysburg speech, was given to the world, and
the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln. Some of
the thundering orations of the nineteenth century will be an
insoluble part of the national literature. There is the mag-
nificent speech of Corwin against American aggression in
Mexico, so timely now and supplying the needs of patriotism
as bountifully in today's imperial tendencies as in 1845; there
are the speeches of the abolition era, many of them classics.
A distinct chapter of ante-bellum literature may be
studied in Washington. Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, friend of Lloyd
Garrison and other apostles of the anti-slavery crusade, estab-
lished The National Era about 1847, a weekly of a pronounced
literary flavor, though admittedly the organ of the Massachu-
setts group of statesmen. Dr. Bailey published in serial form,
beginning in January, 1851, and ending eighteen months later,
Uncle Tom's Cabin. At his invitation, Mrs. Stowe resided in
Washington during the entire period when her story was
being published. All those poems of Longfellow, Whittier,
Lowell and less celebrated authors on slavery, appeared in
Dr. Bailey's journal as part of his abolition propaganda, and
they furnish an interesting study of literature which is the
spontaneous outpouring of the heart, with that which is writ-
ten to order. None of these poems would place the writers in
the enviable position they now occupy in American letters,
and they are universally counted among critics as the lighter
and less convincing efforts of untried genius. Uncle Tom's
Cabin, though it has figured more portentously than any other
book published in this country, is not regarded as Mrs. Stowe's
supreme literary effort and does not compare with a few
earlier, and several later, stories.
Twenty years ago, it was possible to make a literary pil-
grimage of incomparable interest through highways and by-
1921.] SOME LITERARY ASPECTS 491
ways of Washington, where literary genius had strayed and
rested during varying periods. But history, ballad and ro-
mance could utter a plangent cry against the tide of destruction
which has engulfed the hallowed regions about Lafayette
Square. That fetich of the American people, the spirit of
progress, has been invoked to demolish some of the cherished
monuments of letters, and it is something for which to breathe
grateful ejaculations that many distinguished writers have
preserved for posterity what the short-sighted citizens have
failed to protect. In a broad survey of the field, Washington
Irving is the most lovable figure written into the annals, as
George Bancroft is the stateliest. All up and down H Street
on the north side of the Park, their memories linger.
It does not require an unusual imagination to visualize
a scene which the Sage of Sunnyside pleasantly describes in a
letter to his friend, Paulding. It is early in March, 1842, and
the day is soft and radiant as in May. He sits on a bench in
Lafayette Park, watching the White House door for his friend,
Charles Dickens, who has been summoned to an audience
with the President, John Tyler. As he waits he fingers a
note delivered some hours before and anxiously consults his
watch. Dickens tarries, though he later confided to Irving that
he found Tyler a very dull man. The note is from Daniel
Webster, Secretary of State, and invites Irving to come and to
bring his distinguished friend to a noon-day dinner, for to
quote it, "I have, Sir, just purchased in the market a famous
opossum, and I have sent it home to Monica, my cook, who
will stuff it with chestnuts and bake it with sweet potatoes in
true Virginia style. It will be, Sir, a dish fit for the gods.
Come, with your friend, and partake." Presently, the author
of Pickwick Papers, then in Washington for the first time and
Irving's guest at the old Willard Hotel, steps briskly from
the front door of the mansion. Together, the two men cross
the park to the Webster house, on the corner of Connecticut
Avenue and H Street, recently leveled to make room for the
United States Chamber of Commerce. As for the 'possum,
Dickens writes of it to Forster, and in terms of execration.
He acknowledges enjoying the gossip, and he seems to feel
something of Webster's "awful charm."
Washington Irving came to the Capital in 1807, and from
that year until his death in 1857 he glides through the story
492 SOME LITERARY ASPECTS [July,
of its literature like a golden thread. His first residence was
the handsome mansion of John P. Van Ness, member of Con-
gress from New York, and brother of William P. Van Ness,
who married Marcia Burns, one of the heiresses of a vast tract
of land upon which the city has been built. In his own grace-
ful term he was then a mere sapling in the vast forest of let-
ters, and he sat humbly at the feet of the masters whom his
friend frequently brought to dine. Such are the ignominies
which time heaps on cherished spots, this celebrated literary
shrine is now a squalid lodging house near the terminus of the
Alexandria and Mount Vernon railway. Irving spent a large
part of five years in a fine old house in G Street, near Eight-
eenth, as the guest of that John P. Kennedy of Baltimore who
has additional literary fame in that he was the friend and
benefactor of the unfortunate Edgar Allen Poe, and enter-
tained him during that fruitless visit to Tyler to awaken in-
terest in his contemplated literary journal, The Stylus. Ken-
nedy was Irving's companion during those lengthy sojourns in
Europe which resulted in the masterpieces, The Siege of Gran-
ada, The Alhambra and Bracebridge Hall.
Nine years after Irving had awaited Dickens in Lafayette
Park, he sat, perhaps on the same spot, and certainly on the
same day of the same month and the same hour, while an-
other distinguished British man of letters, William Make-
peace Thackeray, paid his respects to the President of the
United States, Millard Fillmore. Joined by the eminent visitor,
they make their way across the park up H Street, where they
are to lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Fish. In a letter to
his mother, written a few days later, the satirist, all gentle-
ness and gratitude, tells of the amiable hosts and how he had
eaten for the first time a frozen dainty called ice cream, for
which Mrs. Fish is justly celebrated. He then tells of his
grand triumph at his first reading of Roundabout Papers and
how, having dined at the Executive Mansion with the re-
tiring President, Mr. Fillmore, and the Presi dent-Elect, Mr.
Franklin Pierce, "these two illustrious Americans came arm-
in-arm into the lecture hall like two kings of Brentford smil-
ing on one rose." He mentions that the glowing face of "Old
Knick," the affectionate sobriquet of Irving among his Mimes,
in the front row was as gratifying as the presence of the two
executives, and he gives delightful details of a very levia-
1921.] SOME LITERARY ASPECTS 493
than of a literary banquet, held after the reading, in the home
of Senator G. T. Davis, whose son was attached to the Amer-
ican legation in London and who was Thackeray's very good
friend. Longfellow has come down from Cambridge with
Lowell, and Fresco tt, who is just polishing off New Granada in
his Washington quarters, lends a quaint touch, and all the
intellectual giants in public life are in attendance.
But one other prandial event for literary genius ranks
with this in the annals of Washington, that dinner which
Thomas Nelson Page gave to Mark Twain to signalize the vic-
tory achieved in the copyright law, engineered by Mr. Clemens'
warm friend and admirer, Champ Clark.
A few years and the hallowed ground on H Street, and
thereabout, echoes to the tread of another generation of emi-
nent men of letters.
George Bancroft saunters out of the house where Mrs. Fish
made a chapter of American culinary history, and had written
her experiments in a series of charming letters. It is a house
where earlier literary memories lie thick, the residence of
Richard Rush, American minister to Great Britain and Jack-
son's envoy to collect the fund left by James Smithson out of
which has sprung an amazing amount of Washington book
treasure. Bancroft turns his comely gaiters towards Pennsyl-
vania Avenue, where he meets his cronies in a well-known
club. He was noted for punctiliousness in garb which was
almost foppish, and he was never seen without immaculate
spats and light pearl gray gloves. In the Washington home,
the historian wrote some memorable volumes, several of the
general series, and all of the History of the Constitution. He
founded the American Historical Society and presided over its
initial meeting in his study. He penned here the last words of
a busy life a fine tract, and always excellent reading: "I
was trained to look upon life as a season of labor, and being
now more than four score years, I know the time of my release
is at hand. Conscious of lingering on the shores which border
eternity, I await, without impatience and without dread, the
beckoning of the hand which will summon me to rest."
Where Bancroft walked, John Hay came in the years after,
and from his home he looked upon the same scene, which
spread about when he beat his wings against the prison bars
as he acted as Lincoln's secretary. In his H Street mansion,
494 SOME LITERARY ASPECTS [July,
Mr. Hay collaborated with Nicolay in the life of the Liberator.
Henry Adams lived next door, and he has written the scene
permanently with letters in many chapters of his Education.
Down this street came a portion of the old horse car route,
"the belt line," memorialized, immortalized and roundly
abused by Walt Whitman. This stormy petrel of American
letters lived in this vicinity, and the better part of his fame
belongs to Washington. There is a side-light thrown on a
recent revelation that Whitman's favorite poem was a sonnet
of Maurice Francis Egan's callow youth, dedicated to his emi-
nent name-sake, Maurice de Guerin, and that the "good gray
poet" deemed the last lines the most hopeful he had ever read :
As if Theocritus in Sicily had come upon the Figure Crucified
And lost his god in deep Christ-given light.
Perhaps this later worshipper of Pan did experience the fire of
Christian truth.
John Burroughs, clerk in the Treasury Department for ten
years, sat often in Lafayette Park and contrived skillful shelter
for the birds. That admirable book, Winter Sunshine, is in
entirety the result of his Washington life. Burroughs lived in
a suburban home, revered in the annals, the Rock Creek man-
sion of Daniel Carroll, the Commissioner, brother of the Arch-
bishop, and where had gathered in the last years of the eight-
eenth century all the cultured and learned of that age.
Thomas Carberry, an early and robust Catholic of the Capital,
who was its mayor, its banker and foremost philanthropist
and a generous patron of letters, purchased the Carroll home
and established a famous bird sanctuary, which it was the in-
tense pleasure of Burroughs to sustain. By a blessed dispensa-
tion of Providence, this charming old woods where the song-
sters revel all through the year in immunity from foes, is now
the Walter Reed General Hospital.
Down H Street, Clio and others of the heaven-born whose
activities have not been so beneficent to the human race, have
been weaving and spinning. Charles Sumner lived where the
many windowed tower of the War Risk Insurance stands, and
there he entertained all the mighty men of letters from Boston
and thereabout. He extended hospitality through years to
John Lothrop Motley, author of the History of the Netherlands,
1921.] SOME LITERARY ASPECTS 495
and it was here that Oliver Wendell Holmes takes a dip into
Washington letters through his championship of Sumner
against Grant, likens the rage of the hero of Appomattox to
that of Achilles, and in inimitable style conveys the impression
that the same qualities which make an intrepid and successful
military commander deter a man from being a just and effi-
cient civic executive.
On Fifteenth and H Streets stood old St. Matthew's.
Church, and an important figure in Washington letters steps
down the long flight of stone steps and wends towards the park.
Rev. Charles White was the assistant pastor of this urban com-
munity in days when the entire city had but six other shep-
herds. Yet he found time to translate that monumental work
of French Catholic scholarship, The Genius of Christianity,
by Chateaubriand, and so excellently did he accomplish this
herculean task that no later scholar has revised his work. It
remains the classic English edition. Father White's zeal and
diligence recalls that a most edifying and entertaining chapter
of Catholic literature pertains to the American Capital.
When the facile graceful pen of Maurice Francis Egan writes
that tenderest of recent Franciscan offerings, Everybody's
Saint Francis, he adds in a memorable fashion to the Catholic
literature of his home city. Charles Warren Stoddard was a
Catholic gentleman who wrote superlatively well, and so
graphically of the South Seas that he was called another Pierre
Loti. He lived for several years in Washington, and wrote
while there that spiritual romance, The Wonder-Worker of
Padua, like Dr. Egan's Saint Francis, one of the few gems of
hagiographic literature which this city has produced.
Many cherished names in early literature appear on the
roles, Anne Hanson Dorsey, Mrs. Sadlier, Madaleine Vinton
Dahlgren. An entire chapter could be given with pleasure and
profit to the literary productions of some Washington pastors.
The very literary beginnings of the Capital are environed
in the pontifical seat of learning, the Catholic University of
America. In the fine old stuccoed mansion where the Paulist
Fathers had, for more than twenty years, their House of
Studies, lived Samuel Harrison Smith and his sprightly wife,
Margaret Bayard Smith, the first the editor of the vade mecum
of the Washington historian, the National Intelligencer; the
other, Washington's first social chronicler and a diarist com-
496 SOME LITERARY ASPECTS [July,
parable to the immortal Pepys in her diligence, the length of
her entries and the space of years she gave to the task.
Georgetown University was, before the divinity faculty
was established in Woodstock, the scene of the printing of the
Annual Letters, the original source of religious history in all
of Lord Baltimore's Palatinate. Books of supreme value have
come from the pen of various members of this seat of learning.
But in the production of fiction and drama which have
come to be regarded as the highest exponent of a national
literature, the American Capital is singularly lacking.
Washington novels are dreary affairs even from clever
pens, as Frances Hodgson Burnett's Through One Adminis-
tration, David Graham Phillips' several attempts to depict
the nation's turpitude, and many feebler efforts. In the
drama, the result is negligible, except in cases of strong books
like Mark Twain's Gilded Age rendered for the stage. Many
amusing farces like Hoyt's obtained popularity, but as liter-
ature they are more defunct than the Hindenburg line of de-
fence.
It is futile to compare Washington with any other city,
great or small. It presents an uniqueness, a newness, and a
debonair face to be found nowhere else. If one likes to dissect
some of the ways in which the Capital differs, there is one very
conspicuous. Notwithstanding its cosmopolitan aspects, there
has never been the slightest approach to a literary salon
possible in Washington, though many brilliant social and in-
tellectual leaders have tried the experiment.
Mark Twain touched on some of the laws of the Medes and
Persians which are enforced in Washington, in that paper,
Notes on a Recent Resignation, written after he had severed
his official connection with the Capital. He felt stifled and
non-productive, and throwing off the restraint of holding Fed-
eral office, he set out, like Conrad, in quest of his youth. But
if literature is art and art should be primarily, recreation, the
fair city of the great Patriot has a long way to travel before
this condition is accomplished. For though visitors conceive
it otherwise, the denizen of Washington takes his pleasure
as work, and he labors indefatigably in pursuit of it.
MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN.
BY ANNA BLANCHE MCdLL.
OW that women are so numerously participating
in affairs, It is interesting to turn a moment from
the contemporary throng to certain eminent
figures of the past who, though lacking the oppor-
tunities which supposedly make our epoch so
superior, stamped upon their own time and subsequent his-
tory an impress which reasonably ambitious and genuinely
idealistic women of the present may well envy. What was ac-
complished before our era of increased privilege and con-
veniences, without telephones, electricity, automobiles and
airplanes, will afford inspiration for busy dames of today,
will sustain their flagging energies, and reenforce their
strength of purpose. To those, meantime, who may be a little
vainglorious, the contemplation of certain earlier careers of
capability and significance may prove a salutary reminder
that feminine efficiency is not a new star in the firmanent,
that vision, constructive genius, political wisdom and influence
are not post- Victorian acquisitions. They have, as a matter
of fact, illuminated epochs presumably inauspicious for in-
stance, the mediaeval times; the lustre of several feminine
figures then brilliantly efficient justifies an essayist in term-
ing those days "the bright ages." One whose ability and sig-
nificance may be inferred from the titles which various lan-
guages have accorded her, is especially brought to mind by
the approaching Dante Centenary. She is known as La
Grande Italienne, Die Grossgrafin, La Gran Gontessa Ma-
tilda of Ganossa, Countess of Tuscany, daughter and heiress
of Beatrice of Tuscany and Frederick of Lorraine.
Eight centuries ago this great lady played a prominent
part in the dramatic history of that central Europe which has
been so lively a storm centre. Initiated at an early age into
the vivacious and abstruse game of international politics,
from her twenty-fifth year she administered large domains,
defended her rights and those of her allies. Three Popes
were supported by her loyalty and benevolence. Kings and
VOL. cxiii. 32
498 MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN [July,
other temporal rulers found in her a friend, a sagacious coun-
selor and, when occasion provoked, a doughty foe. Historians
have been interested in her as one of the conspicuous figures
of her time, one whose activities were important moves upon
the chess-board of mediaeval Europe. Poets have been fas-
cinated by her idealism, her generosity. In the right transept
of St. Peter's rest her mortal remains and her monument
thus Rome of today holds a memorial of her whose history, in
the eleventh century, was so intimately associated with the
fortunes of the Eternal City.
The background for the career of this truly great person-
age was that upper and central Italy which, during her life-
time, 1046-1114, was the stirring highway to Rome on the
south, and to Germany going northward. As may well be
imagined, it was the scene for some of the momentous polit-
ical and military conflicts of the period. Over Matilda's lands
in France, her estates in Lombardy and Tuscany, swept im-
perial armies; to and fro against them, her Italian retainers
and whatever allies happened from year to year to be asso-
ciated with her. Her castles and strongholds, notably those
of Mantua and Ganossa, were the scene of siege, council, de-
bate, wherein assembled men of supreme military, ecclesias-
tical and political rank.
Recalling Matilda's titles, her early homes in Lorraine or
the Tuscan hills, one might be tempted to idealize her child-
hood, to see her as a little Italian girl, certainly of spirit, ap-
parently of beauty, enjoying the pleasures which a young
member of noble households could cemmand. Just a moment
that picture may flash through tl>e imagination; it is soon ob-
literated by one of those incidents which have given color and
terror to the picturesque, often melodramatic, too often tragic
history of both eleventh and twentieth century Europe. How-
ever idyllic her childhood may previously have been, her
seventh year was made darkly memorable by the murder of
her father followed by one violent episode after another,
precipitated by political and international complications.
Rivalries between German and Italian claims and ambitions
were the larger factors in the drama; the dramatis personse
were chiefly Henry III. of Germany, Beatrice of Tuscany and
Lorraine Matilda's mother and Gottfried of Lorraine suc-
cessful aspirant for the hand and estate of Beatrice after the
1921.] MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN 499
murder of her first husband, Matilda's father. This second
marriage was blessed by no unalloyed nor protracted honey-
moon; for Henry III., with ideas and claims of his own, swept
into Italy, seized Matilda and her mother, and led them pris-
oners into Germany. Within the course of the year the cap-
tives were returned to Italy but before her tenth year, these
alarms and excursions had initiated Matilda into a tempes-
tuous personal and political drama.
In her early girlhood she was married to her step-brother,
another Gottfried of Lorraine. But again no idyllic serenity
was to lend grace to this alliance; a separation shortly oc-
curred; five years later Gottfried fell a victim to the fate that
had ended the life of Matilda's father.
Long before this second experience of murder among
those closely connected with her, Matilda had assumed the
responsibilities of governing her vast territories. Such admin-
istration meant not merely local direction of a homogeneous
people, but also the maintenance of harmonious relations with
other rulers. Necessarily, she was involved with German po-
tentates to the north and Papal affairs to the south. She and
her mother were ardent supporters of the Papacy. Four Popes
Alexander II., Gregory VII., Victor III., and Urban II. were
valiantly aided by Matilda's sympathy, forces, possessions.
Her loyalty to Rome implicated her in those struggles which,
beginning as a contest between spiritual and temporal powers,
often drew other forces into the vortex, becoming a conflict
over French, Italian or German territories, involving the in-
trigue, turmoil, bloodshed which we were wont to designate
as typical of the "dark ages" before our own enlightened era
gave us such sharp personal experience of treasons, strat-
agems and spoils.
In the strife between Papal and imperial forces, Matilda's
resources in central and northern Italy, with the Normans in
the south and princes of the first Crusades, proved the chief
dependence of the Papal power, and manifold were the obli-
gations such an alliance necessitated. No life of royal luxury
was Matilda's, no pampered ease nor peace of mind such as
a woman of her vast worldly estates might seem able to enjoy.
Marshaling armies, mustering councils, holding interviews of
diplomacy in behalf of kings, Popes and other conspicuous
personages; marching from her castles to Rome, going hither
500 MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN [July,
and thither elsewhere as protector of her friends of exalted,
but precarious position such seems to have been her routine.
Her historic castles of Canossa and Mantua were by no means
serene homes for a noble powerful dame, but centres of inter-
national and political affairs, a refuge for persecuted Popes
and their adherents, the resort of kings and princes seeking
her favor, her diplomatic services, her military aid.
Ganossa is memorable, of course, chiefly for the pilgrim-
age of Henry IV. But thither also went St. Anselm of Lucca,
patron of Mantua, long Matilda's spiritual adviser, who was
expelled from his See by Henry. There, for several years,
another refugee from Henry's persecution, found asylum
Bonzio of Sutri, scholar and bishop, friend of St. Anselm and
supporter of Gregory VII. Thither fared three Popes, seeking
safety or resting-place on their hazardous journeys. The most
distinguished of these guests was Gregory VII. He had sought
protection at historic Canossa when Henry IV. arrived, tem-
porarily desirous of being restored to Papal favor. Matilda's
role was not only that of hostess to Gregory, but also that of
intercessor for Henry.
If the situation was not exactly as some historians have
dramatized it, with Henry scantily clad, cold, and ill-fed
during the three days and nights of his penitential abasement
outside the castle walls, how dramatic, nevertheless, it must
have been Gregory and Matilda, chief actors within the
castle; and without, Henry as protagonist during the three
days devoted to seeking reconciliation with Gregory. The
Catholic Encylopedia prints a quaint illustration from a
twelfth century manuscript life of Matilda by a monk of
Ganossa: seated apparently upon a throne the Countess is
depicted; at her feet kneels Henry; at the side sits the Abbot,
doubtless of the monastery of Canossa; the picture bears the
terse, but revealing, legend: "Rex rogat Abbatem; Matildim
supplicat atque." Matilda's supplication of the Pope is sup-
posed to have been the prime factor in obtaining that recon-
ciliation which Henry was so eager to secure, in order also to
regain the favor of unfriendly German princes. Typical of
the caprice and hot blood of the time is the next episode.
Henry departed, apparently in amiable mood; and Gregory
prepared to continue his own journey. To assure his safety,
Matilda and her men, a guard of honor, accompanied him
1921.] MATILDAA VALIANT WOMAN 501
a wise precaution, for en route foes were discovered in am-
bush, hence the Countess and her distinguished protege re-
traced their steps to Canossa.
As foreshortened in history, Matilda's subsequent years
seem a tumultuous warfare. Once more, Henry IV. devas-
tated her Tuscan lands, resenting her alliance with Gregory.
After the fashion of generous women of other days, the Count-
ess pledged a goodly estate to the Church and continued her
defence of its Pontiff. Two other Popes were to be assisted
by her beneficence Gregory's successors, Victor III. and Ur-
ban II. After the former's reluctant consent to his coro-
nation, she helped to establish him in Rome. She advanced
to the Eternal City, occupied the Castle of St. Angelo, and
recalled him, thereby thwarting his enemies. Equally gen-
erous and effective was her support of the next Pontiff,
Urban II.
Not long after his succession to the Papal Chair, Matilda
had married again this time a young man of eighteen, Welf
of Bavaria. She was his senior by twenty- two years, but this
disparity in age seems not to have weighed against the great
advantages hoped for from the alliance. Alas, once more
Matilda's matrimonial experience was to prove far from for-
tunate. Welf and his father, of the same name, both sup-
posedly loyal to Urban, deserted Matilda and her Papal ally,
and went over to the side of Henry. Her estates in Lorraine,
her castles of Mantua and Canossa, and other Italian strong-
holds were seized. Yet once more Henry IV. was to feel her
superior power his forces were defeated before that Canossa
where several years earlier he had besought and profited by
her good graces.
Nearly always successfully for her seem to have termi-
nated the conflicts in which she was involved; yet obviously
such triumphs were the result of constant vigilance, persistent
recourse to military measures and strenuous diplomatic en-
deavors. Less dramatic, however, appear her last years which
coincided with the reign of Henry V. She made concessions to
this monarch who, in turn, showed her considerable honor.
But after her death her lands, which from her childhood had
been the source of so much conflict, once more became the
scene and subject of strife and discussion her generosities
to Rome being disputed for a century after her resourceful
502 MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN [July,
brain, her vigorous activities could no longer influence deci-
sions in battle or debate.
Few women of past or present have attained the prestige
of this truly great woman of the eleventh and early twelfth
century; and it is a prestige all the more admirable in that it
was based not merely upon the glamour of conspicuous posi-
tion and vast possessions, but upon those firm pillars of a
truly worthy fame: exceptional character, unusual mentality,
prudence, generosity wisely expended. History sufficiently
substantiates these enviable traits, but its findings are still
more convincingly attested by the evidence of a master poet.
Writing nearly two centuries after her vital career had ended,
a renowned fellow-countryman gathered up the traditions of
her lofty character and memorialized them in undying poetry.
In the pages of Dante, Matilda has attained the immortal-
ity which supreme art can bestow. Among the feminine
figures of the Divina Commedia her role is second in impor-
tance to that of Beatrice. She is the poet's guide through the
terrestial paradise, as Beatrice is in the celestial sphere. Her
noble nature, active and benign, complements that of Dante's
beloved, who is perhaps more exalted and aloof, the radiant
star of aspiration to whose pure realms Matilda's firm, kind
hand helps the poet to climb. Together the two women com-
plete the symbol of the Eternal Womanly that leads us above
Matilda being the type of the maternal, the all-tender, the
zealously active; Beatrice, type of man's transcendant dream,
essence of the spiritual, the ethereal ideal.
It is significant that Matilda meets Dante in the terrestial
paradise where her hands must guide him through certain
initiations before he is prepared for the celestial presence of
the exquisite lady of his devotion. This creature of his soar-
ing dreams may not stoop from her blest altitude to lead and
instruct him in the earthly paradise: that task is Matilda's.
This fulfillment of divers offices recalls the comparison which
the commentators make between these two women of the new
dispensation and two figures of Old Testament literature,
Rachel and Leah, who appear in a canto of the Purgatorio
before the lines referring to Matilda. Speaking of her sister,
Rachel, Leah makes the allusion which has served to interpret
her own character, that of her sister, and their counterparts
in later lines of the poem: "Her joy in contemplation, as in
1921.] MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN 503
labor mine." Leah and Matilda typify the active life or the
active powers of man; Rachel and Beatrice signify the con-
templative life or the contemplative powers to which Heaven
offers perfect felicity.
Illustrative of the skill of a gifted poet, in accomplishing
inimitable portraiture with a few strokes of his pen, are the
passages wherein Dante acquaints the reader with Matilda.
Brief references in the final cantos of the Purgatorio present
her; yet her nobility and her wise benevolent spirit are pro-
jected with a definiteness and richness which another writer
would have needed pages to achieve. When Dante first meets
her in that earthly paradise which she is to interpret to him,
the poet immediately gives a clue to her rare quality : "Lady,
beautiful . . . Thou who with Love's own beam doth warm
thee." Throughout the remainder of the Purgatorio she but
the more radiantly rounds out this character : "Thou who with
Love's own beam doth warm thee." It is a love that through
the eyes of God looks forth upon creation and finds it good.
As she advances toward Dante, smiling, "most maiden-like
vailing her sober eyes," singing and gathering flowers from
the river-washed meadow at her feet, the poet entreats her to
draw nearer that he may hear her song and learn the cause of
her rare happiness. A perfect expression of the poised, clear-
seeing spirit's delight and confidence in the marvels of crea-
tion is her response expressed in the words of the Psalmist:
"Thou hast given me a delight in Thy creations; in the works
of Thy hands I shall rejoice." The commentators draw special
attention to the symbolism of the flowers she is constantly
culling as she smiles and sings the flowers which to the
mediaeval mind so persuasively showed forth the wonder and
glory of God.
As Matilda leads Dante through the terrestrial paradise,
she interprets the "wilderness of primy sweets" and discourses
"of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden
tree." The lines emphasize her gift of a lovely voice that
excellent thing in woman. She chants psalm and canticle,
"singing as if enamored," as they fare along together. Dante
is happy, too yet expectant of a beatitude more high. It
gleams upon his vision as his guide leads him near Beatrice
but not immediately may his bliss be realized. First, he must
drink of the waters of Lethe which obliterate remembrance
504 MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN [July,
of transgression and sorrow. When he sees Beatrice, she re-
minds him that he has transgressed; typical of the differences
between her and the more tender Matilda are the lines which
describe his august Lady of the celestial plane : her mien was
Of that stern majesty which doth surround
A mother's presence to her awe-struck child
... a flavor of such bitterness
Was mingled in her pity.
Before he may mount to felicity with Beatrice he must
hear her reproaches for his lapses from the high behavior
she desired in him; he must be laved in the waters of remorse
and repentance; he must be immersed in the stream of forget-
fulness of evil. In his anguish of self-knowledge and repent-
ance he swoons, and it is Matilda who with strong hold sus-
tains him while the waters of deliverance pass over him as he
hears the words: 'Tu asperges me . . . and I shall be clean;
wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." Thus cleansed
and freed from bitter memories of fault and sorrow, he is
intrusted by Matilda to Beatrice's handmaids: "Here are we
nymphs; in heaven are stars." Together now the poet, guide
and celestial attendants move onward, "with step in cadence
to the harmony angelical." But even when Beatrice descends
toward them, not yet may Matilda resign her charge. As they
wheel toward the celestial radiance, the glory blinds and con-
fuses Beatrice's lover; when his eyes grow accustomed to the
splendor, once more he turns for instruction to his guide, "the
piteous one who cross the stream had brought my steps." He
asks where the lady of his dream now is, and Matilda indi-
cates where she rests beneath "the fresh leaf of the ever-blos-
soming tree."
Through the concluding lines of the Purgatorio Beatrice,
Matilda, Dante and the poet, Statius, move toward the shores
of that counterpart of Lethe, the stream, Eunoe, whose waters
bring remembrance of all good deeds even as Lethe gives
forgetfulness of sorrow and evil. Dante asks Beatrice the
stream's name but not yet has he passed entirely into her
hands; a little longer he is under Matilda's tutelage, so he
receives this answer: "Entreat Matilda, she will teach you
this;" and Matilda is thus commissioned: "Lo, where Eunoe
1921.] MATILDAA VALIANT WOMAN 505
flows; lead thither, and revive his fainting virtue." Most cor-
dial the poet's recognition of the ministration :
And as a courteous spirit
That proffers no excuses, but as soon
As he hath token of another's will
Makes it his own; when she had ta'en me, thus
The lovely maiden moved her on.
When she has revived his fainting virtue, Dante says:
I returned
From the most holy wave regenerate,
E'en as new plants renewed with foliage new,
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars.
To the stars and to Beatrice! With this last office ful-
filled, Matilda's part in the poet's journey heavenward is fin-
ished. In the pages of the sublime poem we meet no more the
benevolent gentle spirit who, nevertheless, has left an indelible
memory. Always active, but never for an individual purpose
of her own; always engaged in some saving beneficence for
another, she lingers in the reader's imagination and affection
far more charmingly and impressively than many a heroine
of poem, drama, novel, who has been more in the limelight,
more self-assertive, more eager for self-realization, as the
phrase goes. Not through the introspection and self-analysis
of some of the modern heroines is she presented to the reader
her wise counsels, her gentle ministrations, her poet's num-
erous happy epithets reveal her. She is "the lady beautiful,"
"lovely dame," one who "with Love's own beam doth warm
thee;" she is the interpreter of the beauty of Eden and the
splendor of a higher sphere; the meadow flowers at her feet
are her thrice dear delight, yet her eloquence and intellect
can do justice to the glory of Heaven, to philosophical subtle-
ties. Perhaps the phrase that most fittingly portrays her is
"the piteous one," "the compassionate one."
In the Divina Commedia Carlyle found symbolized "Ever-
lasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity." Of
the third Matilda is the personification; in Dante's pages her
compassion is a glorification of that sympathy and understand-
ing which characterized her earthly years. Her radiant be-
506 MATILDA A VALIANT WOMAN [July,
nignity in the Purgatorio exemplifies the power of great art to
emphasize, to make hauntingly memorable what history re-
lates. History supplies the facts and dates of Matilda's dra-
matic, generous career; Poetry, leaving details to biographer
and chronicler, exercises its magic of subtler interpretation
and lifts Matilda's loyalties and benevolence into the sphere
of the ideal; there for all time they remain the vivifying symbol
of what she was in actual life.
Because we today so particularly admire her distinctive
traits activity, liberality, loyalty she seems to have special
significance for our own era. But we shall miss the essence
of her personality and her inspiration, as discerned by her
historians and her poet, if we fail to take account of her con-
cern for things spiritual. In her own day she might have cast
her lot with imperial forces against the powers that stood for
the life of the spirit, but she chose the latter. Her choice gives
a lofty example and fruitful suggestion to an epoch sometimes
seemingly so satisfied with its own efficiency, velocity, easy
generosities, as to be in danger of forgetting that these are but
idle motions, but vain marking of time in Eternity's great
processional, unless they are dedicated to that Divine Energy
reverently sung by Psalmist and by Matilda, gran contessa,
beauteous dame, compassionate one
Delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,
Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo!
LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
IONEL JOHNSON was one who in his day, ex-
cept for a few choice spirits, received less than
his meed of praise from his contemporaries: but,
as sometimes happens in such a case, where many
of his acclaimed contemporaries have passed to
dusty oblivion, he lives; one is always hearing of him some-
where. The circle of his admirers grows wherever there is
fine taste and discrimination. It is to the credit of American
taste that he has always had his following in America.
To know Lionel Johnson was to feel that he ought not to
die. There was something so unique in his personality. One
is mournful when great gifts and great virtues die out of the
world. But, after all, the loss one feels most is the loss of a
personality : and Lionel Johnson was not to be replaced. The
friend who has put together the volume, Some Winchester
Letters of Lionel Johnson, 1 reveals the charm Lionel had and
has for his friends when, in the stress of strong emotion, he
breaks out in this lyric cry :
"The poor boy! The wonderful child! the loving Angel!
for an Angel of God he undoubtedly was intended to be, and
in all associations of my memory with him was and still is.
I care nothing for such external facts about his life as have
been forced upon my notice, I care nothing for the measure of
the world's coarse thumb: this and no less was he worth to
God, Whose hand the pitcher shaped."
Happy, happy the man who, seventeen years from his
death and thirty-four years from the period of those letters,
could inspire such a cry!
Lionel became a Catholic in 1891. Some time during his
Winchester years he went to the priest who was in charge of
the Catholic mission at Winchester. He was sixteen, I be-
lieve, and that would be about the time these letters began.
"Father," he said, "I wish to become a Catholic." "My child,
you are a Winchester boy." "Yes, Father." "Then you are
out of bounds. You should not be here."
1 London: Allen & Unwin. $3.00.
508 LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST [July,
The entire wisdom of this treatment is proved by the
Letters. Lionel was obsessed by religion. Even literature
came second and appears in these Letters mainly as the hand-
maid of religion. One imagines Lionel in the cradle discov-
ering religion. He was a wondrous boy. He always retained
the stature of a child : over his little, delicate, sensitive face the
dome-like forehead beetled. He was a born mystic. He loved
the mystics, from St. Teresa, Thomas a Kempis, St. John of the
Cross, down to Jacob Boehme and John Tauler.
Perhaps those young Oxonions were, in a sense, the
heirs of the old monastic traditions of Oxford: and certainly
the monk's cloak had fallen upon Lionel Johnson. His place
was in a mediaeval monastery of, most probably, the Black
Monks of St. Benedict. His was essentially a cloistered nature.
He was in love with ritual. He would have been exquisitely
happy reading, writing, illuminating, chanting the Hours in
some old monastery. He had a Franciscan nature. He loved
the simplicities and profundities of beauty, all innocent things,
animals, birds, flowers. Perhaps one of the attractions to-
wards Buddhism which we find in his letters it was a neo-
religious fashion of the day was its mercifulness.
The letters would be bewildering, written by anyone but
Lionel. We accept them as his, we who knew him, as we
accept St. Thomas Aquinas. They were written to a group of
his contemporary schoolboys one was a Bugby boy. One
wishes that the other side of the correspondence might have
appeared : only to extraordinary schoolboys could Lionel have
written as he wrote to A. B. and C. as the protagonists choose
to appear.
It is a new side of Lionel to think that he was love-hungry.
The editor of these Letters speaks of "an arid home-life, a
lonely school-life." I think, perhaps, that Lionel was some-
thing of a white blackbird. He would have been difficult to
most people. His family were High Church Anglicans. In
one of the letters Lionel, writing from home, says that all the
family are at ^Mass" and wonders at their certainty of an un-
seen world. But to them he was heretical, though he ought
to have been with them. "A.," who I find was two years his
senior, was considered an undesirable correspondent by
Lionel's father and a ban was put upon their letters, to be
withdrawn later. "A." says:
1921.] LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST 509
"Though I had for him a passionate devotion and admira-
tion, which still survive after thirty-five years, my prevailing
attitude towards him was one of reverence and awe. As he
says more than once in his letters, he appeared to be unim-
pressionable, unemotional, undemonstrative in a word, he
walked through life aloof, like some sescetic saint. ... I recog-
nize that I was often chilled by this aloofness."
That experience is utterly opposed to mine. We had been
warned before Lionel came to see us first in September,
1894, I think that he was capable of infinite silences. It was
a time when literary people much foregathered, and there
were tales of gatherings where Lionel had sat like a little
Buddha, never opening his lips. I know nothing about his
silence, though I know a great deal about his talk. From that
September Sunday, when he came down the little garden-
path under the apple trees, there were no pauses nor lan-
guors in our friendship or our conversations.
Of course, Lionel was extraordinarily Irish, although his
Irish blood was Anglo-Irish, not Celtic-Irish, and a great uncle
of his had commanded the army which overthrew "the brave
United Men" at the Battle of New Ross. I wonder what that
ancestor would have thought of Lionel. Lionel was rather
amused by his descent from such a one. He had a passion
for the Irish. In fact, nothing Irish could be to him common
or unclean; many of his Irish friends were not of the class
from which his friends would naturally be drawn, which is
only to say that qualities are not bounded by class in Ireland.
I remember him as almost an intemperate talker, to be
counted with the great talkers of my experience. And we
found him eager to respond to affection. For some years we
saw him constantly. I remember one Christmas Eve night
when, after returning from Midnight Mass, he sat up till six
o'clock discussing questions of scholarship. I can see him
now stealing up to the baby's cot, his finger tips touching, his
little body one delicate shrug of amusement, to peep at the
young Christian, for whom he would not be godfather because
he would not take any responsibilities. He was exquisitely
amused when the babies were troublesome: and he was always
perfectly intimate and at home. We had a little wise, ancient
dog that Lionel loved. He came all the way from Gray's Inn
to see us before we went into the country in May, 1899. I
510 LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST [July,
came in to find him sitting patiently in my little workroom
with Paudeen clasped to his breast.
The Letters begin in October, 1883, soon after he had won
the coveted distinction of a Winchester Scholarship. Poetry
and religion make up the subjects of his letters. Browning or
Shelley are always on his tongue. He would have his friends
love these poets as he did. His absorption in poetry was extra-
ordinary; it was scarcely less than his absorption in religion.
He is always ready to turn from the discussion of religion to
the discussion of poetry. He goes through all the phases.
"I have nothing to say against the religion of Buddha:
it is a very noble one: but it repels me chills me, I would
rather be a Roman Catholic."
"A strange position ours ! Two of Young England's rising
generation in search of a creed. I have come more or less
to the conclusion that there is no absolute universal Truth
that each of us has to struggle on and make his Truth for
himself. I can conceive of no religion which can equally
satisfy me and a converted coal-heaver."
His enthusiasm for all manner of religious teachers is on
a level with his enthusiasm for poets sermons and poetry
almost equally delight. One gets the celebrities of that day
constantly Liddon, Scott-Holland, Dean Alford, Jowett. His
own Headmaster, Ridding, who seems to have been most dis-
cerning and sympathetic. One hardly wonders at the sixteen-
year-old boy recommending his correspondent to read Songs
Unsung, by Lewis Morris, and at his enthusiasm for Edwin
Arnold's Light of Asia. The blind critics were leading the
blind public in those days, and in each case the religious bear-
ing of the matter under discussion would have prevented a
direct appeal to Lionel's critical judgment. Like most very
generous critics, he often erred from excess of generosity.
Again : "I feel, as all must feel who believe in spirituality,
an intense love of beauty in all its forms. I realize to myself
an infinity of love in listening to true music, seeing true paint-
ing, reading true poetry: but in the midst of all this delight
I feel an impatient longing to crash discords into the music,
to burn and destroy the poetry and painting with their mem-
ories, to be up and doing and suffering: the state of mind
which goads men into the cloister or the gambling-hell."
He was always seeking a revelation.
1921.] LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST 511
"I have often gone into churchyards and, when possible,
vaults and charnel houses to try and hear the truth from the
lips of spirits, to force the paraphernalia of Death to unfold
their secrets : I have tried, oh, so earnestly, and in utter faith
to make the dead hear me, feel for me, comfort me. But the
dead are too deaf or else too happy to listen to me."
This makes poignant reading to one who remembers
Lionel's young terror of Death, that terror which it is the hap-
piness of age to lose.
"I must live a lonely life: a life of art and patience, of
sympathy and self-reliance, but, above all, a life of unseen
relations, of spiritual visions and intuitions. . . . The wind,
the air, dreams, all bring me questions and keep me waiting
for answers."
"I once, in an essay for Ridding (i. e., the Headmaster of
Winchester), defined happiness as 'the having full scope in
one's own sphere and circle for practising that rule of life
which practice and instinct have approved.' Ridding looked
at me with a smile and said: 'You have come into the world
too late for that."'
After this passage he goes on to make a strange statement
of his own aloofness.
"No one can excite my loathing nor my indignation.
After reading Thomas a Kempis I can listen without disgust
to sensual conversation. I can return freely to walk over the
downs. ... I told Ridding last half my convictions no, God's
convictions in me, and he did understand me in a way most
lovingly gentle and sympathetic. He told me he did not ex-
pect me to be able to do two things : to keep myself (from my
own point of view) unspotted from the world and to keep any
friends in the world.'*
This recalls Lionel's curious friendships, not to be alien-
ated by any fall or any ignorance, his curious tolerances, per-
haps the attitude of St. Francis de Sales to the criminal: "But
for the mercy of God, there goes Francis de Sales."
All through is the endless seeking after Truth. The
Church of England does not content him, although "it is a
live protest against materialism and shall not die. Only think
of the chances which the priesthood offers: the countless in-
fluences of the pulpit and the altar all protest against the
devil in even feeble hands : and how I could train myself ! All
512 LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST [July,
other ways of communion with the spirits of our brothers are
so half-hearted. Altruism from the independent standpoint
of misty intuition . . . may be noble in the abstract : but have
all the cliques and sets of philosophers won the world? I
know the Society of Jesus and the Brotherhood of St. Francis
of Assisi are mighty influences: hardly the Positivists or
Idealists."
He ends up this letter with: "I did think of the Church
of Rome. I am not sure yet. You see what I am driving at."
Yes in many phrases it was evident he was thinking of
the Church of Rome, though he almost thought he might be a
priest i. e., a High- Anglican one, at times: at other times
that he might be a "priest" in a sense which had nothing to
do with definite forms of belief.
"A priest! I am to be a priest: I have almost decided
on it. Of course, I don't mean a mitre in a shrine, nor even a
stall, but a vantage ground of my own, an enticing people
under the pretence of shovel-hattism. ... I have carefully
studied the prayer-book and the priest-making part. I can
honorably go through that process."
"I am a priest: my own nature leads me thitherward
almost to Ultramontanism. I am prospectively a consecrated
priest. I am set apart. ... I have a very firm faith in hier-
archy as a need of humanity. ... For the last two or three
years I have worn round my neck, out of sight, a Rosary blest
by Pius IX., given me by a dying Romanist cousin whose last
words were : 'You will use it in Paradise if not before that.' "
More and more his passion of religion emerges from the
turgidness of youth and breaks into rhapsody.
"Christ, the one completion of humanity, being the most
human in His divinity; Christ is pure man, all man, essential
man, full of warm life and love: a perfect man, but all God,
raised to the ecstatic passions of love and true Godhead by
the burning fire of love. God in essence, man in substance,
perfect God, perfect man. Is that orthodox? I am no heretic.
The Church is a holy thing: full of error and whitewash and
dead men's bones and potential love. . . ."
"Love! Incarnate love of man for man becoming God
God and Man all one, Divinity paradoxical!"
"Ave Maria, or a pro nobis!"
"I know nothing: I am ignorant, only a priest of God.
1921.] LIONEL JOHNSON: WYKEHAMIST 513
But love is God, and when we love we are creators of God, the
new creation of star-fire and immortal tears. Oh, God, Thy
priest, Thy priest!"
These extracts would give quite a false impression if they
led anyone to believe that Lionel at this time was an orthodox
Christian. He was hardly that at all except at rare moments,
and there are passages in these letters which might shock
many an orthodox person. In those years his mind was in a
fluid state, now one thing, now another, absorbed in poetry, in
theories, sometimes of the most fantastic kind, but ever grop-
ing towards religion, and with the face of the Founder of
Christianity seen at the end of a long dark passage.
He was still mocking at and longing for the Establishment,
his young feet ever going one way, towards the goal he was
not to reach till 1891, seven years later than the date of these
letters. He was groping towards it in dreams.
"I had a dream last night: I was a priest of Rome, alone
before the altar: and the chancel roof seemed to burst apart
and a chain of flowers swung down to me out of the blue, and
as I tried to climb I woke."
Ths last paragraph of these remarkable letters is in a
way their summing up :
"I began melancholy: now I am laughing. There is Sum-
mer and the thought of love, Sappho of Lesbos and the soft
winds. ... I believe in the Communion of Saints, the for-
giveness of sins, the assertion of the body and Love Ever-
lasting."
voi,. ex 1 1 1. 3,'i
A NEGLECTED CLASSIC.
BY JAMES J. DALY, S.J.
N the summer of 1534 Sir Thomas More lay con-
fined in the Tower of London waiting until such
time as Henry might deem it opportune to put
him to death. They had not yet deprived him of
books and writing-paper, and he spent the hours
of his captivity very pleasantly, when he was not praying, in
composing a spiritual treatise. He beheld the stately and
massive edifice of the Catholic Church in England, reared by
the sanctities, martyrdoms and holy aspirations of a thousand
years, shaken to the verge of collapse. No one in England, or
elsewhere, not even the tyrant, Henry himself, saw so clearly
the march of events towards national apostacy as this shrewd
lawyer and appraiser of men.
His clairvoyance is somewhat of a mystery today. Exter-
nally, the Church seemed to be much the same as ever. The
King's quarrel with the Pope would probably blow over as so
many similar quarrels had done in the past. Besides, kings
did not live forever, and quarrels of this kind were not com-
monly transmitted to heirs and successors. It seemed to the
European statesmen of the time to be no more than a rather
serious diplomatic tiff, which would readjust itself in the usual
way. One could almost succeed in discovering a defence for
this light-hearted view of the situation in the subsequent
course of events, when the Church was so often apparently
on the point of retrieving her fallen fortunes, but for some
slight mischance due to incredible blundering and misunder-
standing. While the late Chancellor was languishing in the
Tower, the minsters and monasteries were still intact, Catholic
churchmen were in honor, the Church was functioning through
countless parishes, the Catholic life of England bore all the
signs of vigor. It was inconceivable, one might suppose, that
the knell of doom was sounding for this glorious Church.
But so it was. Sir Thomas knew it, and he was the only
man who knew. Was it because he, better than anyone else,
understood the formidable nature of the conspiracy of wealth
1921.] A NEGLECTED CLASSIC 515
and political influence organized by greed against the Church?
Did he alone detect the symptoms of deadly decay in a hier-
archical structure long exposed to the corrosive action of secu-
lar interference and favoritism? Was he the only one keen
enough to appreciate the fearful force of the impact of im-
ported heresies and revolts upon a powerful middle-class
which had been scandalized and rendered cynically critical
by the worldliness of courtier-prelates? Whatever the signs
in the heaven during that halcyon and deceptive calm, he, of
all the statesmen in Europe, read them as harbingers of a
devastating hurricane. Whether he realized that the destruc-
tion would be so thorough and so irreparable as the event
proved, there is, perhaps, no means of determining. But his
deductions and forebodings, the oppressive sense of great and
impending calamity, as they urge themselves to the surface in
the spiritual book written during the first months of his im-
prisonment, cannot but strike the modern reader with some-
thing of the force of inspired prophecy.
The title given to the treatise by Sir Thomas is A Dia-
logue of Comfort Against Tribulation, Made by an Hungarian
in Latin, and Translated Out of Latin Into French, and Out of
French Into English. The setting of the dialogue is the house
of a certain Anthony in the city of Buda. Anthony is a vir-
tuous and respected citizen who has grown old in the service
of the State, and now, in his declining years, has nothing to do
except to engage himself serenely in the more immediate
preparation for a happy death. All the portents of the times
point to an imminent invasion of the Turks and the violent
persecution of all good Christian people who value their Faith
more than the whole world. A prey to the prevalent appre-
hensions, Anthony's nephew, Vincent, pays several visits to
his uncle to gather from the old gentleman's wisdom and ripe
experience fortifying counsels against the approaching trials.
This is the simple framework on which are spread the hopes
and fears and most intimate self-communings of a great man
at the most critical moment in his life.
The framework also serves as a disguise. Here we have
again the Sir Thomas of the Utopia, a liberty-loving man
obliged in an age of absolutism to veil his ideas under fictitious
forms. Plain speaking was not always an easy virtue in those
days. When tyrants had to be crossed, it was sometimes a
516 A NEGLECTED CLASSIC [July,
heroism; and, when his conscience urged it, it was a form of
heroism which Sir Thomas was not afraid to practise. In the
tracasseries of courts, where envy and jealousy were ever on
the alert to entangle honesty in the coils and technicalities of
the law, the man who desired to raise the windows and to
induce a circulation of new and healthy ideas, had to pick his
way nicely. The Utopia was a challenge and a criticism which
would have brought Sir Thomas' head to the block ere his
career was well started, had it been couched in plain terms.
As it is, we are a little surprised today that it succeeded in
passing off as well as it did. Sir Thomas clearly entertained
an almost cynically low opinion of popular powers of pene-
tration. Similarly, we are astonished that the transparent dis-
guise of the Dialogue of Comfort could have succeeded in de-
ceiving the dullest of official censors.
What imaginable reason was there for issuing a book in
England on the religious troubles of remote Hungary? The
Turkish peril in the Balkans, although serious in that day as
it has been in our own, is, nevertheless, no particular occa-
sion for a minute and anxious survey of the spiritual resources
of Christianity on the part of an Englishman waiting for exe-
cution in the Tower of London. How could the censor have
failed to pause over this sentence : "For there is no born Turk
so cruel to Christian folk as is the false Christian that falleth
from the Faith?" The only plausible explanation of the dens-
ity of the officials, who missed so egregiously the real nature
and point of the book, is that Henry had not yet exposed to
the world the native ferocity of his temper. He had been up
to this a rather good-natured monarch. It is probable that he
himself was unaware of certain black possibilities in the re-
cesses of his heart, and as yet had not the faintest notion of the
fearful upheaval which was to follow in the train of his head-
strong passions.
The ex-Chancellor must have had a profound insight into
the character of his sovereign. English Catholics were never
in so great need of fortifying counsels to prepare them for an
overwhelming avalanche of adversity. And yet the tempest
was so far below the horizon of/ the average man, with its
annihilating menace so completely hidden from the common
view, that the most brilliant and intellectual Englishman living
at the time could send out a solemn warning and endeavor to
1921.] A NEGLECTED CLASSIC 517
prepare his countrymen against disaster without being sus-
pected of his real design, simply because he employed the
rather crude device of putting his words in the mouth of an
imaginary character and transferring the outlook from Eng-
land to Hungary. Sir Thomas was neither by nature nor un-
toward fortune a prophet of evil. He may be described as the
wittiest, most genial, and most successful man of his day. It
was in a way characteristic of his clever genius, since he felt
impelled to accept the role of Jeremias, to utter his lamenta-
tions in as light a note as possible. Sir Thomas could not
help being merry. When a little subtlety was needed to throw
treason-hunting censors off the track, he must have reveled in
the expedient of merriment.
The historical significance of the Dialogue of Comfort
will, perhaps, constitute its chief interest for the general
reader. It leads us into the innermost penetralia of a states-
man's mind at a crisis when the world, of which he was a
foremost figure, was undergoing an epochal transformation.
But it would be an error to suppose that the value of the work
is merely documentary. It is beyond any doubt one of the
most charming spiritual treatises in the English language. It
is divided into three books, of which the contents may be
roughly outlined as follows: I. The Function of Suffering in
Human Life; II. Various and Common Kinds of Affliction,
Principally Temptations of the Soul, with Corresponding
Remedies; III. Temporal Evils and the Way they are to be
Encountered. Under these broad headings is collected a mass
of weighty practical philosophy garnered from a career un-
usually crowded with rich and multifarious experience, and
presented with an instinct for literary form which, in England
at least, was the most highly cultivated of the age. Like Sir
Thomas himself, it is a synthesis of unexpected excellences,
with surprises around every corner. .
It is to be noted, too, that, while the Dialogue is intensely
Catholic in tone, it carefully avoids all controversy. In this
respect it is a singular exception among the writings of Sir
Thomas in the vernacular. In a great nation abundantly sup-
plied with an educated clergy, secular and regular, it is diffi-
cult to understand why his was about the only pen at the serv-
ice of the Church to do battle in the vernacular against heresy.
His antagonists w^re arrogantly confident at having the field
518 A NEGLECTED CLASSIC [July,
of literature practically to themselves. They were men who
felt no inconvenience in stooping to employ any coarse or ig-
noble means of discrediting the Church in the popular eye.
Very often Sir Thomas was constrained to fight his adversaries
with their own weapons. With a public just learning to read,
personal invective went farther than argument, and boisterous
banter than nice appeals to feeling. This concession to the
needs of the moment has seriously diminished the literary
permanence of the martyr's polemical works in a language
which has thrown all its favor on the side of his opponents,
and has always regarded his as a lost cause. It remains a
matter for regret that the merits of .Sir Thomas More and of
his rivals have not been weighed by literary critics in the same
scales.
In the Dialogue of Comfort, however, Sir Thomas moves
in a serene mountain atmosphere high above the brawlings
and bickerings of the cities and congregations of men. He dis-
engages himself from all petty strife and clamorous demands;
and in the silence of an upland height beyond the clouds,
holds deep converse with the sun and stars, with God and
eternity. Strident echoes sometimes faintly reach him from
the busy ant-hills of men; but he refuses to be drawn from the
spiritual regions of his thought.
"Holy St. Bernard giveth counsel that every man should
make suit unto Angels and saints to pray for him to God in the
things that he would have sped at His holy hand. If any man
will stick at that, and say it need not, because God can hear us
Himself, and will also say that it is perilous so to do, because
they say we be not so counseled by no Scripture, I will not
dispute the matter here. He that will not do it, I hinder him
not to leave it undone. But yet, for mine own part, I will as
well trust to the counsel of St. Bernard, and reckon him for as
good and as well learned in Scripture as any man that I hear
say the contrary. And better dare I jeopard my soul with
the soul of St. Bernard than with his that findeth that fault in
his doctrine."
Although this is the farewell performance of Sir Thomas
in the field of literature, written in a dungeon and in the very
shadow of the scaffold and packed with reflections tinged by
the light of a dawning eternity, his whimsical humor will
assert itself. The easy and discursive style suggests a back-
1921.] A NEGLECTED CLASSIC 519
ground of aged leisure in a country villa in the calm enjoy-
ment of nature and pleasant surroundings. The author pos-
sesses his soul in peace while the axeman is waiting, and
through pages of most solemn import his natural laughter
runs like a glistening thread.
Thus, in discussing the vivid and detailed realism of
dreams, Anthony, in a quizzical mood, defies young Vincent
to prove that he is awake, and not merely dreaming. Vincent
fumbles hopelessly and, finally, cries out in dismay: "God's
Lord, uncle, you go now merrily to work with me, indeed,
when you look and speak so sadly, and would make me ween
I were asleep." When Vincent apologizes to his uncle for ask-
ing him to exhaust himself by so much talking, he elicits the
following gem: "Nay, nay, good cousin, to talk much (except
some other pain let me) is to be little grief. A fond old man
is often as full of words as a woman. It is, you wot well,
as some poets paint us, all the lust of an old fool's life to
sit well and warm with a cup and a roasted crab, and drivel
and drink and talk." He then proceeds to tell a story about a
nun who was being visited by her brother. The young man
had just received his doctor's degree and had hastened to see
his sister after his long absence at the university. When she
was called to the grate and had presented her finger-tips, she
forthwith began to pronounce a long lecture on the vanity of
the world in her gentle solicitude for her brother's soul.
"And gave him surely good counsel (saving somewhat
too long) how he should be well ware in his living and master
well his body for saving of his soul: and yet ere her own tale
came all at an end, she began to find a little fault with him,
and said: 'In good faith, brother, I do somewhat marvel that
you that have been at learning so long, and are doctor, and so
learned in the law of God, do not now at our meeting (while
we meet so seldom) to me that am your sister and a simple un-
learned soul give of your charity some fruitful exhortation.
And as I doubt not but you can say some good thing yourself.'
'By my troth, good sister,' quoth her brother, 'I cannot for you,
for your tongue hath never ceased, but said enough for us
both.' "
Then there is the famous story of old Mother Maude,
about the Ass and Wolf who came upon a time to confession
to the Fox, and many another diverting tale. Sir Thomas
520 A NEGLECTED CLASSIC [July,
liked to tell a good story. It is the Lord Chancellor, perhaps,
who thinks it necessary to make apology : "As Pliny saith that
there is no book lightly so bad but that some good thing a man
may pick out thereof, so think I that there is almost no tale
so foolish but that yet in one matter or other to some purpose
it may hap to serve." We see why Erasmus loved this man,
why he was the idol of his children, and why, ere his head
was danced off by a royal mistress, he had to assume the mask
of dullness to escape the exacting fondness of the King for his
society.
And yet he seems to have been visited by pathetic little
misgivings about the bubbling humor which there was not
enough misfortune in the world to choke. Vincent is quoting
Solomon and St. Thomas Aquinas in support of the contention
that a man may sometimes search for comfort in tribulation
at other sources, less spiritual and exalted than those hitherto
enumerated by his uncle: "For a merry tale with a friend
refresheth a man much, and without any harm lifteth his
mind and amendeth his courage and his stomach, so that it
seemeth but well done to take such recreation."
Anthony replies, and this time it is the Saint and not the
Lord Chancellor who speaks, that he thinks any counsel in
favor of such comfort is superfluous, since it is a kind of com-
fort men are too prone to take of themselves. "You may see
this by ourself, which coming now together to talk of as earn-
est, sad matter as men can devise, were fallen yet even at the
first into wanton idle tales; and of truth, cousin, as you know
well, myself am of nature even half a gigglot and more. I
would I could as easily mend my fault as I well know it, but
scant can I refrain it as old a fool as I am. Howbeit, so par-
tial will I not be to my fault as to praise it. But for that you
require my mind in the matter, whether men in tribulation
may not lawfully seek recreation and comfort themselves with
some honest mirth, first agreed that our chief comfort must be
in God, and that with Him we must begin, and with Him con-
tinue, and with Him end also." He then settles the point in
conformity with good and learned men who have allowed
honest mirth as a concession to human weakness, too soon
wearied, alas, by heavenly discourse. The argument is then
clinched by another tale.
The rare literary quality of the style will not have escaped
1921.] A NEGLECTED CLASSIC 521
attention in the passages from the Dialogue already cited.
A homely vigor of phrase, a swift penetration of mind, a bal-
anced condition of judgment, and the easy gesture of mag-
nanimous humor give these pages a Shakespearean flavor
which epicurean palates will delight in. The large scroll of
life lay unrolled before the eyes of Sir Thomas, as before the
eyes of the Elizabethans, giving him some of that spacious out-
look which our literature was not to know again till some
fifty years after his death. Here, for instance, is a touch
which draws the modern and mediaeval worlds together.
Shakespeare could not have seen it, or he would have stolen it.
Anthony has been speaking of the cruel indulgence and false
consolation which certain obsequious pastors hold out to the
wealthy members of their flocks.
"And in such wise deal they with him [the rich man] as
the mother doth sometimes with her child: which when the
little boy will not rise in time for her, but lie still abed and
slug, and when he is up weepeth because he hath lien so long,
fearing to be beaten at school for his late coming thither; she
telleth him then that it is but early days, and he shall come
time enough, and biddeth him, 'Go, good son, I warrant thee
I have sent to thy master myself; take thy bread and butter
with thee: thou shalt not be beaten at all.' And thus, so she
may send him merry forth at the door that he weep not in
her sight at home, she studieth not much upon the matter
though he be taken tardy and beaten when he come to school."
What child has not been the victim of this gracious per-
fidy? Again, speaking of the brief tenure of their worldly
estate, which prosperous folk enjoy, a favorite topic with
moralizing philosophers, the Dialogue breaks into the follow-
ing noble cadence:
"O cousin Vincent, if the whole world were animated with
a reasonable soul (as Plato had weened it were) and that it
had wit and understanding to mark and perceive all things,
Lord God! how the ground on which a Prince buildeth his
palace would loud laugh his lord to scorn, when he saw him
proud of his possession, and heard him boast himself, that he
and his blood are forever the very lords and owners of the
land. For then would the ground think the while in himself:
'Ah, thou silly, poor soul, that weenest thou were half a god,
and art amid thy glory but a man in a gay gown. I, that am
522 A NEGLECTED CLASSIC [July,
the ground here over whom thou art so proud, have had a
hundred such owners of me as thou callest thyself, more than
ever thou hast heard the names . of. And some of them that
proudly went over mine head lie now low in my belly, and my
side lieth over them. And many one shall, as thou doest now,
call himself mine owner after thee, that neither shall be sib to
thy blood, nor any word hear of thy name.' Who owned your
castle, cousin, three thousand years ago?
"Vincent: 'Three thousand, uncle? Nay, nay, in any King,
Christian or heathen, you may strike off a third part of that
well enough, and as far as I ween half of the remnant, too.
In far fewer years than three thousand it may well fortune that
a poor ploughman's blood may come up to a kingdom; and a
king's right royal kin on the other side fall down to the plough
and cart; add neither that king know that ever he came from
the cart, nor carter know that ever he came from the crown.' '
Does it seem extravagant to discover here for the first
time in our literary history the genuine ancestry of that dis-
tinguished and dignified port and sad grave demeanor which
glorify the prose of Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor,
DeQuincey and Newman? And it is hard to believe that
Thackeray the genial satirist, could have read the famous de-
scription of the emptiness of fame without feeling kinship
with Sir Thomas More.
"But now to speak of the thing itself in his own proper
nature, what is it but a blast of another man's mouth, as soon
passed as spoken? Whereupon he that setteth his delight
feedeth himself but with wind, whereof be he never so full,
he hath little substance therein. And many times shall he
much deceive himself. For he shall ween that many praise
him, that never speak word of him; and they that do, say yet
much less than he weeneth, and far more seldom, too. For
they spend not all the day (he may be sure) in talking of him
alone. And who so commends him most, will yet (I ween) in
every four and twenty hours wink and forget him once. Be-
sides this, that while one talketh well of him in one place,
another sitteth and sayeth as shrewdly of him in another.
And, finally, some that most praise him in his presence be-
hind his back mock him as fast and loud laugh him to scorn,
and sometimes slyly to his face, too. And yet are there some
fools so fed with this fond fantasy of fame that they rejoice
1921.] A NEGLECTED CLASSIC 523
and glory to think how they be continually praised all about,
as though the world did nothing else day nor night but ever
sit and sing, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, upon them."
There is much precious ore of this kind in the Dialogue
of Comfort for the literary student, if he will take the trifling
amount of patience required for the first few pages to become
accustomed to the occasional archaisms and labored construc-
tions inseparable from prose finding its literary wings for the
first time. As it is, the prose of More is hardly more archaic
and certainly less awkward and floundering than the prose of
Milton, who enjoyed the advantages of a most extraordinary
century's growth and development to improve upon the style
of his predecessor. It is futile to conjecture why an age,
which reprints Ascham and Fuller for the use of young stu-
dents of our early prose, should ignore so completely the
vastly superior merits of Sir Thomas More.
The attention of Catholic teachers and publishers is re-
spectfully directed to the Dialogue of Comfort as a promising
field of enterprise. 1 Besides its value as a literary monument,
it is full of bright little side-lights on English life of the fif-
teenth century. It should stimulate historical curiosity and
research. One would like to know, for example, why the sub-
ject of suicide enters so largely into the Dialogue. It is a
phenomenon we hardly expect to find very prominent in so-
ciety during robust Catholic times. Whether the reader is
looking for literature or history or prudent direction in the
spiritual life, he will find the Dialogue a treasure. It will
bring him into close communion with one of the great men of
all time. And this is the surest and, it is commonly conceded,
the only test of a great classic.
1 The Dialogue of Comfort is published In the popular "Everyman's Library."
It occupies the second portion of the volume entitled Utopia.
GRANDMAMMA.
BY AENGUS MACHAR.
RANDMAMMA was dead. Desiree told herself
anew the fact. She found that she must keep re-
minding herself Grandmamma had died yester-
day. The machinery of the household had not
yet run down. For the first time since the home
was built, sixty years ago, an affair was to be carried on in it
without Grandmamma's supervision her own funeral.
Aunt Juliette was resting. Uncle Henri off seeing to ar-
rangements. Stephanie and Bernice, the schoolgirls, had
slipped from the house of mourning on the pretense of sewing
their new black over at Ray Dillon's.
The telephone sounded the dissonance of life: Desiree
flew to quiet it.
"Yes. This is Lake Seven Three One. This is Desiree
speaking. Who is it? Leonide, dearest! This is Desiree. I
am quite alone. Yes, our sorrow is indeed great. I cannot
face it until tomorrow will be over. You are coming here to-
night? I wouldn't, dear. Please do not come, Leonide. It
won't do any good now. All the talk seems to have died
away. The family will be furious, and the girls ought not to
hear things. Can't I say anything to make you stay away?
What's that about Grandmamma? She is not worrying now,
dear. She would wish you to stay away. What is that about
Aunt Juliette? No, I'll not tell her you rang up. I'll keep
hoping that you will change your mind. Well, when shall I
expect you? Eleven? Very well. Good-bye."
Desiree hung up the receiver. This was a new, an utterly
unexpected trouble. Every one would know now for certain
about Leonide. The talk that had ebbed to a whisper would
roar and thunder. Indeed, Leonide was a cruel, heartless girl
to affront her wronged family in this hour of sorrow. But,
was it not like Leonide's own selfish daring? She would come
in dramatically, for a last, fond look at Grandmamma; for
one more mocking glance around the home circle.
Desiree moved restlessly through the hushed rooms to the
1921.] GRANDMAMMA 525
north parlor, where the dead kept passing hours of state. A
half dozen elderly French friends were exchanging whispered
reminiscences. Desiree looked down on the beautiful dead.
What a long, hard, laborious life was here ended! How
very silent Grandmamma had been about those miserable law-
suits of years ago; about silly, weak old Grandpapa; about
Desiree's own spendthrift father; about Leonide how much
had she known about Leonide?
Desiree studied the mystery of the still features, and a
rush of tears came to relieve her aching heart. As she stood,
struggling for composure, strong arms enfolded her, and she
leaned her troubled head for a moment on the shoulder of
Cousin Julian.
"I told you not to be coming in here. Desiree, you must
rest. What shall we all do if you break down?"
She suffered him to lead her away for she must tell him
about Leonide. Julian would know what to do.
"Leonide rang up to tell me she is coming. Oh I begged
her not to. She laughed in her old way, and told me not to
worry. And the house will be full of the old friends. And it
will be worse for Stephanie and Bernice; they have some new
ones who will be curious."
Julian muttered an exclamation of wrath. He cordially
detested Leonide. "Isn't that like her, though? Of all the
nerve!"
Miserable and perplexed, they regarded the situation. Of
the whole family, only Desiree and Julian knew the real truth
about Leonide.
"See here, Desiree, Leonide won't be fool enough to in-
jure herself. She'll pull things off, somehow. For four years
she has kept folks guessing, and her name seems to be as good
as ever. We'll see her bluff it out."
When they were all children, together, Leonide and Julian
had quarreled incessantly and furiously. When they were in
high school, Julian scowled darkly and pointedly at his pretty
cousin in the home circle. Abroad, Leonide knew he was
watchful and wrathful, and she complained bitterly of him to
Desiree. But Desiree was puzzled and distressed. She found
Julian with his charming French courtesy, his American dash
and manly faith, the best of comrades. Why should he and
Leonide be so hateful to each other?
526 GRANDMAMMA [July,
Too soon Desiree's eyes were opened to the truth. Julian
must have known for a long time before Desiree dared to face
her own suspicions. Grandmamma probably knew every-
thing. These two never mentioned the name of the absent one.
Acquaintances, some of the new ones, accepted the ver-
sion that was spoken. Leonide Lasserre had given up her
position as private secretary and married a playwright. She
was leading a gay and joyous life, spending money on the most
delightful things. She never really had time to go back to the
old home, even for a visit. Yes, there was a baby, a winsome
little girl, left in the care of a woman who lived out in the Mis-
sion. Leonide never did care for children.
Older friends gradually ceased to inquire about Leonide :
"What was her new name? Mrs. Henry Marvyn, was it?
or Martell? No one could say positively. Oh, well, many
people really have no memory for names. Odd, isn't it? Oh,
come to think of it wasn't it Madison ? Something beginning
with an M. Yes, the family seem to have lost sight of her.
You know how Grandmamma Lasserre has a way of not an-
swering questions and yet of being perfectly courteous."
And so the heart sore was covered by the conventional
account invented by Leonide herself. If there were many to
feel out the truth of the hidden scandal, genuine sympathy
kept them silent. Still talk rambled on:
"What was Leonide Lasserre, the prettiest of the girls,
doing now? Was her husband a manager, a playwright or
an actor? Come to think of it, Merrill, that was the name, I
heard was a clever musician; but he had no money. Oh, well,
what is the use of pinning down any of these gossamer tales.
We know or guess the truth, and the girl will never come back
to take the snubbing prepared for her."
Many old-time friends, whose attentions had lapsed dur-
ing her recent years of hardship came for a last look at
Grandmamma; and many came who had held aloof in silent
deference to her unspoken wish. She had not resented sym-
pathy, but she had crept away from it.
Gustave Renee, turned seventy, tall and gray, a weather-
beaten warrior of life, looked down on his still old friend.
He thought of her care-free childhood in pioneer days. Of her
brief belle-hood when he and many other admirers lived for
a kindly glance and smile from Felicienne Duboie. A love-
1921.] GRANDMAMMA 527
marriage had brought her only hardship, poverty, struggle,
disgrace. Her sons and daughters had turned out improvident
or helpless; her grandchildren were good-looking, clever.
The old man reviewed the facts. She lay there in tranquil
Roman beauty. Only her seamed, worn hands suggested the
long labor of her life. "Unconquerable Felicienne," he mur-
mured as he turned away.
Voices of old ladies quavered in the adjoining room.
"Everything of the best, my dear, and plenty of it. Her own
things mended and put by, so the girls would not have any
trouble. Bed and table linen in a box. Even the little altar for
the Last Sacraments all ready. A child could get the things
out at a moment's notice."
"And I was upstairs in the room of the youngest girls.
They might be rich men's children, the best dressed girls at the
Academy; and on what, my dear?"
"I know, I know," agreed another. "She used to have
beautiful laces, you remember. She has handed down to these
girls those wonderful flounces, and her own skill in making
things over!"
"And she was so big in her ways. A dozen pies at a bak-
ing; two meats and three or four vegetables. She saw to every-
thing. Ah, now they'll miss her managing and keeping them
all going."
Thus one note was sounded around the bier of Grand-
mamma Lasserre. Admiration for the way she had cared for
a large family of ne'er-do-wells.
Meantime the only two of her name, with her own sense
of responsibility, had on their young hearts the unhappy prob-
lem of Leonide. Would she come? How pitiful to have
gossip recommence over the coffin of this valiant old woman!
The hours seemed to pause, their stricken way in a house
of mourning. The awful hand of waiting tore at Desiree's
heart; yet she knew the time was dragging on. The rooms
were now well filled. Friends and connections were praying,
exchanging whispered comments, or sitting in the aged ab-
straction of loss. There were also young people; school friends
of Stephanie and Bernice, pretty girls and tall lads. The boys
made themselves helpful in carrying chairs; standing about
observantly; the prevailing note of mourning was becoming
to their youthful devotedness. Tomorrow evening they would
528 GRANDMAMMA [July,
be again their merry selves in some cheery environment. Oh,
if only Leonide would not come!
At eleven o'clock a limousine slid discreetly up to the
shadows of the acacia trees near the curb. Desiree was already
out on the steps. She was in despair at the absence of Julian.
Had he deserted her, unwilling to see Leonide?
A dainty figure fluttered up to the lighted doorway, and
Desiree forgot three years of outraged affection. She clung to
her sister.
"You darling, waiting on the threshhold, as usual." Leon-
ide's silver laugh was sweet and low. Fragrant, swathed in
soft raiment, brilliant in the clear starlight, the prodigal her-
self was indeed "as usual." Desiree felt at once that Leonide
still hated to be hugged. Even in those moments of reunion
Leonide was thinking of her gown, her hair. Chilled, Desiree
drew her sister's arm within her own. "Gome up to my room
for a little while, dearest. We shall be all alone," she pleaded.
"I couldn't, tonight, Desiree. My husband will be anxious
when he finds that I am not waiting for him."
"Your husband? O Leonide!" Desiree's voice had a
quaver of gladness in its bewildered question.
"Yes, we were dining with business friends awfully nice
people and Mordaunt had to leave on an imperative mes-
sage. A partner died in the city. So I left soon after. I
wanted one last look at Grandmamma."
Leonide's clear, low voice carried to those seated in the
first parlor. Desiree hurried through the little vestibule. At
the end she whispered :
"You did not mention husband or dinner when you tele-
phoned." She did not mean to probe, but she was quite willing
to let Leonide know she saw gaps in the story.
"Perhaps I did not mention either, Miss Literal Good
Sense. You gave me very little time to think with your ex-
hortations to stay away. Grandmamma belonged to me as
well as to you."
Desiree cuddled closer at the breaks in Leonide's voice.
What difference did it make? Leonide could make up any
story she pleased. She was at home, at home, if only for a
few moments.
The two girls made a strange contrast. Desiree, slender
and nun-like, was in black and white, Leonide in the shining
1921.] GRANDMAMMA 529
panoply of fashion was a brilliant night moth. Now, how-
ever, she drew up her silken wrap of silver mist and so ren-
dered less dazzling the display of gleaming arms and shoul-
ders, of gown and jewels.
"No, Desiree. I will not go upstairs; I haven't time. Take
me to Grandmamma."
"Why, it's Leonide Lasserre," ran the whisper as the girls
entered the long living room. The whisper was eager with
amazement and curiosity.
Old Mr. de Cotiss came with extended hands of welcome.
Madame Gramont put sheltering arms around the girl; she
was thinking Leonide's starry eyes seemed as heavenly as ever.
General Talla smiled down on the little witch, who seemed to
him as fairy-like as when he used to watch her playing with
his grandchild, Bettine.
Suddenly Desiree loved all these faithful ones of Grand-
mamma's Old Guard. Leonide seemed to be giving to each
of them a reward of merit in a smile of disarming appeal.
Then Desiree's heart sank, as she saw her sister turn to Mrs.
Devereaux, a middle-aged antagonist of Leonide's girlhood,
and in whose eyes could now be read suspicion and possible
affront. Characteristically, Leonide made the first move:
"Dear Mrs. Devereaux, how are you? It was only the
other day I was telling my husband of the fright you once
gave me when I was a naughty little girl and helped Henrietta
steal cookies. You did put fear in my heart for once. How is
Henrietta? How I should love to see her and the baby. Fancy
you a Grandmamma!"
Mrs. Devereaux was not very happy over her daughter's
married life, and this speech was a vexation to her. Leonide
went on with the subdued and pensive sweetness suitable to a
gathering of mourners:
"I had been planning to be more dutiful, and to bring my
husband out to see this sweet old home. But we kept putting
it off and now now, Grandmamma will never be here."
Abruptly she turned away, but not quickly enough to hide
the genuine tears that ran down her glowing cheeks. She
looked back to them, with lips quivering. "I will remember
you all as kind."
Desiree's arms were around her, and the two girls went
into the room where Grandmamma lay. The watchers there
VOL. cxiii. 34
530 GRANDMAMMA [July,
considerately withdrew, and the sisters were alone with the
dead.
Leonide advanced; studied the coffin-plate and then by
an evident effort of will moved forward to look, long and
silently, at the well-remembered countenance. She did not
weep, yet Desiree had the feeling that Leonide's soul was cry-
ing aloud for help. Oh, for words to help; to help so effec-
tually that never again Leonide would be mocking, bitter,
sinful !
The door opened and closed gently; Julian was in the
room. Desiree had a new prayer: that these two would not
quarrel; not even spar here with Grandmamma dead be-
tween them. Julian was very pale as he spoke:
"Leonide, I am pleased to see you here. Desiree, I meant
to be on hand all evening; but, unexpected business kept me.
Leonide, I have a message for you from Grandmamma."
They looked at him with startled eyes, Julian was rarely
so moved. He went on.
"You remember the old houses Grandpapa had south of
Harland Street, and how we used to tease about the fortune
they would bring?"
"The rookeries, that were finally sold for taxes? Yes, I
remember," said Desiree.
"Well, I found out this afternoon that they had not been
sold. Grandmamma managed to save them, and to put them
into such good order, that they now bring in a fair rental.
How she did it is a mystery. God only knows what a struggle
it must have been."
Julian was silent. The girls felt that more was coming,
and scarcely grasped the amazing statement that Grand-
mamma had left property.
"Only two months ago she paid the last bill for the repairs.
From now on they will bring in, under a ten years' lease, fifty
dollars a month. All the papers are in order."
Again Julian paused. The faint, cloying odor of flowers
and burning waxen candles, the shadows of the big room that
lay beyond the flickering light of the tapers, accented his un-
wonted solemnity.
"Leonide, Desiree and I are to use this money solely for
the support and Catholic education of your little one. And
you must give the child up. That is Grandmamma's mes-
1921.] GRANDMAMMA 531
sage. She asks the three of us to think first of all of the child's
soul, and to help one another."
Desiree was crying now. But the tears were of sweet relief
and tender love. Blessed Grandmamma doing all things
well. This was the crowning gift of her selfless old age.
But Leonide's eyes were brilliant, hard. Somehow she
had known that this bitter hour would come upon her. Mas-
terful Grandmamma ! she was taking from her sinful arms her
one treasure. Leonide knew she would consent and, already,
for baby's sake, she was glad.
Julian went on uneasily. He stood with one hand on the
coffin edge, as if gaining sanction. He was wondering how
Leonide would answer, and anxious to get the matter plainly
stated, before she could spring on him a refusal.
"I got the first news of this today, after I had heard from
Desiree you intended to come."
"But, if I refuse, Julian, to give my baby up !" ^
"Grandmamma left no suggestions for such a case."
"Grandmamma knew you would not refuse, Leonide,"
said Desiree, quickly.
Leonide laid her hand again on the coffin and said quietly :
"I am willing, Julian. I yield to Grandmamma's arrange-
ment."
"What is your child's name?"
"Felicienne, Grandmamma's name and she is baptized."
The cousins stood silent. United as never before, they were
feeling the strength of an affection, reaching from beyond the
grave. Then Leonide said simply and sincerely:
"I have been desperate, trying to keep baby. Her board
bill has not been paid for two months. I am in debt up to my
eyes. The clothes I have on are borrowed. I came here to-
night to bother all of you; but Grandmamma always was too
much for me."
"Won't you live," Desiree whispered, "as Grandmamma
would have you? Her heart broke over you."
"I am giving my baby, Desiree. I am quite content with
my way. After tonight I will not trouble you or Julian."
Desiree saw it would be useless to counsel Leonide. And,
after all, would not Grandmamma in heaven know best how
to pursue this straying sheep?
Julian said with musing wonder in his low voice :
532 GRANDMAMMA [July,
"For the last three years I have been putting every cent
I made into the business; to get it started. I gave as little as I
decently could to the home purse. And those poor worn hands
look at them toiled for me, for all of us. She worked like
a slave cooking, washing, mending."
"I might have given more, too," said Desiree brokenly,
"if I had not insisted on paying for violin lessons for Bernice.
And Grandmamma saving every dollar! Oh, I know now why
she did nearly all the wash herself; we thought she was just
fussy. Why couldn't she tell us? We would have strained
every nerve to help."
"Perhaps we would not," said Julian grimly. He knew
he would not have felt like making sacrifices for Leonide's
child.
Leonide had fallen into stricken silence. Life was so
masterful and so ironic. Dimly she began to apprehend that
Grandmamma might get her, too, as well as little Felicienne,
and make her once more good.
"I must go," she said. "I promised to return these clothes
before morning. A pal was good enough to lend them, and as
I may be asking her again, I would better keep my word."
Desiree's heart was torn between pity and dismay. But
Julian held out his hand.
"After the funeral I will get some papers ready for you to
sign, Leonide. And I promise you, before God and Grand-
mamma, to do all in my power that your little girl may grow
up to be as good as you wish tonight."
"I am sure you will, Julian. Good-bye, Grandmamma.
Desiree, I must get to the telephone without meeting any more
of those people. If I do, I shall scream. I must call up a taxi.
No, please do not come with me."
Leonide slipped away. Julian went back to the old friends
who had determined to watch during the night. The door
leading into the room of death stood open and the responses
of the Rosary came to Leonide as she stood in the corridor at
the telephone.
Desiree waited on the front steps, helpless and miserable,
to see Leonide go back to that mad world where gladness
and hope were dead.
But Grandmamma lay with the smile that had come with
her last breath.
flew Boohs*
THE LETTERS OF ST. TERESA. A complete edition, translated
from the Spanish and annotated by the Benedictines of Stan-
brook. With an introduction by Cardinal Gasquet. Vol. II.
New York : Benziger Brothers. $3.50.
The Nuns of Stanbrook Abbey have already given us an
English version of St. Teresa's Interior Castle of the Soul, The
Way of Perfection and her Minor Works, including a metrical
translation of the Poems, all learnedly annotated by the Discalced
Carmelite, Father Zimmerman, or by Sister Beatrice, the Bene-
dictine nun, who is the actual translator.
Apart from a fellow-feeling for the contemplative spirit nat-
ural to the daughters of the Patriarch of Western Monachism,
there is an historical reason for the zeal of the English Benedic-
tines in St. Teresa's propaganda of the interior life, which it is in-
teresting to note. When the French Revolution was raging, a
community of Teresian Carmelites, driven out of their convent,
found refuge in a Benedictine nunnery at Compiegne. Out of this
asylum they were dragged by the authorities and guillotined on
July 17, 1794. They w r ent in procession to their death singing the
Te Deum. The kinship between the two Orders thus contracted
in the blood of martyrdom, has never waned.
The letters printed in this volume were written from July 2,
1576, to December 2, 1577, a momentous period in St. Teresa's
life, second only to the era of her first foundation of the Reform.
It embraces her internment a polite name for imprisonment
by her superiors of the Mitigated Rule, good men "whose eyes
were held" lest they should know what a great soul they were
persecuting. The letters are numbered from 101 to 200, and
average three and a quarter pages octavo. About one-half are
addressed to her nuns in the houses she had founded before she
was rudely ordered off to stay behind her cloister. Most of the
others were written to the Discalced Carmelite Friars, whose Re-
form she had originated, and a few to some of her former con-
fessors. Being intended for the Saint's intimates, they are, in
spirit and tone, exceedingly familiar, and treat largely of matters
not in themselves spiritual. None the less the saint mingles the
principles and practice of perfection, both in its beginnings and in
its development, with advice, suggestions, and precautions about
secular affairs: these letters give much guidance to souls in holy
living.
534 NEW BOOKS [July,
Two negative excellences are revealed: St. Teresa never
voices the least ripple of complaint for her cruel treatment nor
expresses the faintest desire for release; nor makes mention of
supernatural occurrences which we know from other sources
often happened except in veiled disguise to one or other of her
closest confidants. St. Peter of Alcantara, well acquainted with her
spirituality, witnesses to it in these words : "As to visions, locu-
tions, revelations, and other supernatural experiences, she never
prayed for them, nor wished for them; all she wishes for is to do
the will of Our Lord in all things."
The translator gives us the connecting links, or hinges, of
happenings, making of the Letters a sort of parallel autobiography
with that already written by the Saint.
St. Teresa's courage, gentleness, and invincible greatness of
soul stand out in these letters; especially her patient and con-
tented mind under the most atrocious slanders.
As Sister Beatrice writes: "I am sure you will be glad to
hear that I have come upon several recently discovered letters of
the Saint which have only been published in Spanish. Unfortu-
nately I got them too late to include them in this volume. They
will appear in Volume III. of the Letters now in course of
preparation."
THE ORIGIN AND PROBLEM OF LIFE. By A. E. Baines. New
York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.60.
With the main thesis of this book, namely, that there is
something more in living things than mere chemico-physical
operations, every Catholic philosopher will be at one, but as to its
author's view that the something in question is contained in, or
conveyed by, the atmosphere, and that this life-giving principle,
"the form of energy which actuates organized matter," is thence
obtained, e. g., when the infant takes its first breath, and further,
that this is indicated in the passage, "The Lord God . . . breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life," and other passages, we cannot
expect the same amount of acceptance. The pre-natal processes
which are of a very highly vital character; how are they carried
on if the "life-giving principle" is only infused after birth? And
there are other difficulties. We do not feel competent to criticize
the electrical theories in connection with seed development, but
there is one point in the first part of the book which calls for
comment. The writer criticizes severely Haeckel's view of the
Monera as "structureless," and says, very properly, that Haeckel
would have done better to have said "structureless as far as we
now know," or something of that kind. But he does not seem to
1921.] NEW BOOKS 535
be aware that no one now regards HaeckePs Monera as anything
but a figment. A nucleus has been now discovered in so many
organisms once thought to be non-nuclear that the existence of a
really un-nucleated unicellular organism is now regarded as un-
proved and unlikely.
The second part of the book, which relates to the prolonga-
tion of life by the use of a carbon rod specially prepared and being
towards ordinary carbon as steel is to iron, the use of which rod
was suggested by an examination of Egyptian statues, in whose
hands many must have remarked objects like the corks used by
athletes, is very curious, and we should like to know more about
the results produced by this rod than we are told.
TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE. By M. Edith Durham.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.75.
The authoress of this book is familiar with Balkan affairs
by reason of years of study and travel amid its mountains and
valleys. She has a conversational knowledge of the Slavic and
other languages. Her experiences have carried her from the huts
of the peasants to the palaces of the princes. She has written
many books. To follow the last one intelligently, one should have
been somewhat familiar with her previous volumes.
This contribution is interesting for its vividness, and its con-
firmation if that were necessary of the fact that Austrian and
Russian plots and counterplots caused the assassination of the
heirs of the Austrian throne at Sarajevo in 1914. The descrip-
tions of customs and people in Montenegro and Servia remind
one of Bernard Shaw's play, Arms and the Man. The nobles are
shown to be at heart bandit chiefs. The peasants have been
ruthlessly exploited, racial and religious feelings have been exas-
perated by self-interested conspirators until conditions became
charged with war long before 1914. The rival countries hated
each other with a bitterness greater than that felt by all towards
Turkey. The main causes of unrest were the conflicting ambi-
tions of Austria which was but another name for the German
Empire and Russia, always dominated by her hope for Con-
stantinople.
The Balkan peoples, excepting the Albanians and the Moham-
medans, are either Slavs, Bulgars, or Rumanians for the most
part. They show different degrees of civilization, still strongly
tinged with barbarism. The different branches of the Greek
Orthodox Church hate each other with a deadly hatred, tempered
only by their common hostility to the Catholics. The Greeks in
their upward thrust have sought to dismember Albania. The va-
536 NEW BOOKS [July,
rious wars that have torn the peninsula have given occasion to
hideous barbarities not less savage when perpetrated by so-called
Christians than those of the Turks. The whole peninsula needs
peace, a stable government, new roads, a chance for free exporta-
tion of the products of the mines, fields, and forests, and equally
free opportunities for importation of the necessities which they
do not produce. If the Allied Powers, whose diplomacy domi-
nates all of the countries of the peninsula, will but unite, there is
hope for the future.
PSYCHOLOGY, AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. By Owen A. Hill,
S.J., Ph.D. New York: The Macmillan Co. $3.50.
Scholastic lore, so valuable if not indispensable to correct
views of human life and conduct, is too often made unattractive
and inaccessible by being cast in a language unfamiliar ('tis true,
His pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true) to most modern students of philos-
ophy. Hence, every attempt to body forth the same thought in the
vernacular tongue simplifies the subject and encourages its study.
Within the present well-printed and well-indexed volume of 350
pages, Father Hill deals in an adequate manner with the most
profound and practical problems of all philosophy: the most pro-
found, because they investigate the question of the ages the solu-
tion of the riddle of the universe; and the most practical, because
they are concerned with doctrines of paramount importance, such
as man's free and spiritual nature, his immortal destiny, and his
moral responsibility to a Supreme Being, Who is Author of all
things, and Who holds man accountable for his conduct. In the
calm light of pure reason, clarified and corrected by the expe-
riences of the race, and illumined by the genius of such minds as
Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, and not unmindful
though its limited field of natural reason inhibits the formal use
of the light supernal that radiates from Divine revelation, the
author studies at less or greater length, as the problem is of less
or greater moment, such questions as life, sensation, the rational
soul, free-will, and immortality; God's existence and attributes;
and the providence by which God controls and governs His crea-
tion. Father Hill follows, in his treatment of these questions of
Psychology, and Natural Theology, the lines and arguments
familiar to the student of Scholastic philosophy. And here I
might enter a criticism of what seems to me a too common fault
in Catholic works of philosophy in the vernacular. Scholastic
method and technicalities are not essential to Scholastic truth.
Writers ought to emancipate themselves as far as possible from
the former, and present the treasures of Scholasticism in the
1921.] NEW BOOKS 537
simple flowing style which popularizes modern pseudo-philos-
ophies. Father Hill himself exemplifies how it can be done in his
interesting and readable chapter on Hypnotism.
Objection, too, might be made to the digressions by which the
author interferes with the logical sequence by hauling in inci-
dental questions that belong elsewhere. For example, the digres-
sion on "life'* in God, on page 9, and the time of origin of the hu-
man soul, on page 12. Is not the statement on page 26, that, "re-
stricted evolution is without foundation," too conservative, and
liable to arouse prejudice against the author's work? The doc-
trine of the immortality of the soul is treated very exhaustively.
And the thesis on the origin of ideas is very satisfactory. The
author justly confines his proofs of the existence of God to the
a posteriori arguments of the contingency and order of the
world, and conscience and consensus hominum, which are but so
many aspects of the argument from effect to cause. His con-
sideration of various difficulties urged against theism by pseudo-
sciences and modern agnosticism is very complete. In this, his
work serves as a valuable repertoire for the champion of the
fundamentals of ethics and religion; while its method of treat-
ment might be modified with profit, the general solidity of the
contents must recommend the volume to students of philosophy
in colleges and seminaries.
IRISH UNIONISM. By James Winder Good. Dublin: The Talbot
Press, Ltd. 6 s. net.
This book is of substantial value to all who desire to gain
knowledge concerning the vexed question of Ireland, and who
wish to ground their opinions upon such knowledge rather than
upon prejudice or passion. The author has an intimate and ex-
tended experience of Irish Unionist opinion and methods and,
having obtained his experience from inside and from close per-
sonal contact with the exponents of Unionism, his exposition of
the case against Unionism is sympathetic. In brief, the book is
the history of the process by which Irish Unionism became an
established thing, not only regarded as tolerable, but accepted as
a political dogma of irrefragable validity and righteousness, after
having begun its career under the anathema of all Ireland, North
and South, Orange and Catholic.
The author brings forward proof for his contention that in
the year 1800 practically all Orangemen in Ireland regarded the
Act of Union as a crime. He then traces the process by which
the promoters of the Act, through the extension of special favors
to the Orange element, caused a change in their point of view,
538 NEW BOOKS [July,
so that in less than twenty years a majority of the beneficiaries
of this political crime had swung solidly to its support, and laid
the foundations for their descendants to look upon it as a neces-
sary factor in Ireland's relation to England. A detailed study of
the steps by which the protagonists of the Ascendency, especially
such skillful propagandists as the Anglican Archbishop Whately,
succeeded in giving education in Ireland an English and anti-
Irish bias makes unpleasant, but profitable, reading for those who
wish to understand the steps by which one nation tried to subju-
gate the very soul of a conquered weaker one. Such a reading
will also make us understand and appreciate the almost mirac-
ulous wonder of the unconquerable persistency of patriotism in
the Irish race.
THE CATHEDRALS OF CENTRAL ITALY. By T. Francis
Bumpus. New York : E. P. Button & Co. $3.00.
THE CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF ROME AND SOUTH-
ERN ITALY. By T. Francis Bumpus. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. $3.00.
These two volumes describe an artistic pleasure tour of Mr.
Bumpus in central and southern Italy. He journeys leisurely
from city to city, with his critical eyes ever open to the archi-
tectural beauties of Italy's famous churches and cathedrals. He
necessarily borrows a great deal from his predecessors their
name is legion and he is over critical at times in his estimates
of such churches as the Cathedrals of Milan, Siena and Florence.
We can pardon him his prejudices in favor of French and Eng-
lish cathedrals and churches, but we cannot pardon his frequent
slurs on the Faith which produced these churches. He bears false
witness when he tells his readers that much of the doctrine and
practice of the Church of Rome is founded on the legends of the
saints, and she has made shipwreck of common sense and truth
upon the rock of the Bible.
A feature of these volumes is a series of excellent photo-
graphs.
THE SONG OF ROLAND. Done into English, in the original
measure, by Charles Scott Moncrieff. With an introduction
by G. K. Chesterton and a Note on Technique by George
Saintsbury. New York: E. P. Button & Co. $2.00.
There is a beautiful meetness in the dedication of this new
Englishing of the immortal Chanson de Roland to three young
poet-soldiers "who came to their Roncesvalles in September, Oc-
tober and November" of 1918. For it was in those war-torn days
1921.] NEW BOOKS 539
that the abiding vigor and nearness of this heroic poem lay hands
upon the spirit of Charles Scott Moncrieff; and it is chiefly by
having lived through those days that the present generation will
have learned how to read it understandingly. They are not so
far from us, after all those old combats in their fineness, their
fierceness, their apparent futility; those combats where the young
men went out high-heartedly at the counsel of the old men;
those combats of which Mr. Chesterton says, in his wise and
deeply moving introduction, that they are never finished because
they defend "the sanity of the world against all the stark anar-
chies and rending negations which rage against it for ever."
It would be hard to overstate the value of this book both for
schools and for general reading. It is, in the translator's modest
word, "an attempt to reproduce line for line, and so far as pos-
sible word for word, the Old French epic poem" a work of
enormous delicacy and difficulty, accomplished with self-abne-
gating skill and precision. Perhaps the highest praise which can
be paid its scholarship that is to say, its truth is to say that
Mr. Moncrieff has made the historic old story absorbingly inter-
esting again: that he has made us feel that its chief value is less
as a piece of literature than as a piece of life.
SAINT COLUMBA OF ION A: A STUDY OF HIS LIFE, HIS
TIMES, AND HIS INFLUENCE. By Lucy Menzies. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50.
SAINT COLUMBA. By A. B. Ochiltree Ferguson. Dublin: The
Talbot Press, Ltd. 2 s. 6 d. net.
The fourteenth centenary of St. Columba's birth has, presum-
ably, provided occasion for these biographies. Miss Menzies
makes a palpable, but unsuccessful, attempt to identify the Chris-
tianity of the Celtic Saint with Scotch Protestantism. There is
reiteration of the modern argument that has striven to depict
the Church of ancient Ireland and Scotland in a position not
only of geographical, but of doctrinal isolation. The bibliography
at the end of the book is extensive. If it had been drawn upon
more exhaustively much inaccuracy might have been avoided and
the cause of historical truth better saved. We notice, for ex-
ample, that Miss Menzies quotes among her authorities The Early
Scottish Church, by Dom Columba Edmonds, O.S.B. A careful
reading of Dom Edmonds would surely have saved her from such
statements as, "He (St. Columba) did not trouble about doc-
trines or dogmas," or "It (the Columban Church) had no elabor-
ate ceremonial of the Mass, no worship of saints and angels."
Her treatment of the supernatural is frankly rationalistic. The
540 NEW BOOKS [July,
miracles of the Saint are either to be viewed in the light of the
Druid superstitions which they replaced, or explained upon the
hypothesis of psycho-therapy!
From a Catholic standpoint Miss Menzies' work is untrust-
worthy, incorrect and deficient. That it may fire the non-Catholic
reader to learn more of St. Columba from other sources is a con-
summation devoutly to be wished.
Mr. Ferguson's biography is, on the whole, well-done. In
somewhat less than a hundred pages he has given us a reverent,
sustained chronicle; one that sets forth with strength and charm
the personality of the remarkable man whose influence was so
compelling that one of his disciples could cry out, as he followed
Columba to a strange land: "It is thou who art my father, and
the Church is my mother, and my country is wheresoever I can
gather the largest harvest for Christ."
A TOUR OF AMERICA'S NATIONAL PARKS. By Lt.-Col. Henry
O. Reik. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $4.00.
Colonel Reik knows and loves the National Parks of Amer-
ica better than any living American. He has done more than any
other man to make his fellow-citizens realize the marvelous beauty
of the great national playgrounds.
In this practical guidebook he describes "The Incomparable
Circle," which includes the famous parks of the Rocky Mountains,
the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades, the Yosemite, the Yellowstone,
the Grand Canyon, Sequoia, General Grant, Crater Lake, Mount
Ranier, Glacier, Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde.
We are only now beginning to realize that these Western
Parks contain some of the finest mountain scenery, some of the
most beautiful lakes and valleys, and some of the most remark-
able natural phenomena that may be observed anywhere in the
world. The geysers of Yellowstone, the giant redwoods of
Sequoia, the glaciers of Mount Ranier, the cliff dwellings of Mesa
Verde are certainly striking enough to interest the most blase
world traveler. "See America First" is Colonel Reik's slogan
and his most entertaining book will undoubtedly make many a
reader spend his vacation in the National Parks.
THE ART OF LETTERS. By Robert Lynd. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $3.75.
Mr. Lynd, whose Old and New Masters made an excellent
impression on the reading public, has given us here a series of
critical essays in lighter vein. He reminds one of Augustine
Birrell in his power to re-create a new interest in old writers, and
1921.] NEW BOOKS 541
although he does not equal Birrell for play of humor, sureness
of touch, and unfailing air of distinction, he has unquestioned
grace and charm. He discusses the "ancients" as far back as
Campion, Donne, Pepys, and Bunyon, the romantics like Gray
and Collins, and such a divergent later group as Coleridge, Tenny-
son, Meredith, and Oscar Wilde. Mr. Lynd is not a big gun of
criticism, nor does he claim that distinction, but he does revital-
ize for us in brilliant fashion many great men of the literature of
today and yesterday, whom we are too likely to take for granted
and leave unread on our bookshelves. For doing this exception-
ally well, he deserves the welcome which this volume is certain to
receive.
A SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 1815-
1918. By J. F. Rees, M.A. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
$2.00.
The period in English history falling between the close of the
Napoleonic wars and the armistice of the Great War is filled with
social and industrial changes which followed upon one another
so fast that it is difficult to realize them. The present volume is
a good, though brief, account of this period. The Chartist up-
risings, the horrors enforced upon working people at the begin-
ning of this period, Christian Socialism, the Socialists, the
Fabians, the newer industrial unionism, the national guild, and
the distributive state, all find a place in this volume. One ob-
jection to the book lies in the fact that it limits itself to the
period beginning with 1815. An introductory chapter outlines
very briefly, and very incompletely, some of the earlier social and
economic considerations which conditioned the development of
the nineteenth century. But because, in England especially, the
period before 1815 is so important, it is difficult to get the proper
information concerning nineteenth century industrial conditions
without a great deal more information than can be found in an
introductory chapter.
IRELAND IN INSURRECTION. By Hugh Martin. London:
Daniel O'Connor. 3s. 6 d. net.
This is an Englishman's record of fact, and as such it pre-
sents a terrible indictment against the British Government in
charge of affairs in Ireland. The author's purpose is to tell the
truth about Ireland, and he obtained his information by visiting
the scenes he describes and interviewing the eyewitnesses of the
events he pictures. His recital is such as to portray conditions
that are paralleled only by the state of affairs that existed during
the Prussian invasion of Belgium. He is altogether an unbiased
542 NEW BOOKS [July,
witness, and he gives testimony of wanton misrule, studied ter-
rorism and unrestrained despotism. The reader is shocked to
learn of the outrages committed in Tipperary, Roscommon, Tralee,
Kerry and Belfast, and wonders how such excesses could be per-
petrated by any civilized nation, and especially after the pro-
fessed idealism of England in the late War.
It is clearly apparent from the words of Mr. Martin that the
facts have been suppressed and withheld not only from the
American people, but also from the British themselves. When
told as they are in this book they present a forceful picture of the
shameful and dishonorable activities of Greenwood and his asso-
ciates. The book contains a preface by Sir Philip Gibbs, who is
unrestrained in his condemnation of the way the British have
been treating the Irish problem. He states : "Only by conciliation
may we ever have peace in Ireland, for we shall never break the
Irish spirit. . . . Only by the most generous, full, quick, and
honest acknowledgment of their right to govern themselves shall
we keep the Irish people within our commonwealth of nations,
secure the loyalty which may follow hatred, and cleanse our
reputation in the world."
There is much need of Mr. Martin's book. It will serve a
mighty purpose in righting public opinion.
AMERICAN POLICE SYSTEMS. By Raymond B. Fosdick. New
York: The Century Co. $2.00.
This volume contains the results of an intimate, personal
study, extending over a period of two years, of the police depart-
ments in seventy-two cities of the United States. Mr. Fosdick is
the author also of European Police Systems a volume dealing
with the police systems of the principal cities of Europe. He is,
therefore, well qualified both in training and experience to give
a correct estimate of the work that our police departments are
doing.
He first outlines the problems facing the American police
the prevalence of crime and other characteristics that make the
task of the American police much more arduous than that of the
European police. He then shows the development of the Amer-
ican police systems in the cities and explains, by citation of many
examples, the workings of the various systems in the cities of the
United States. He also devotes a considerable portion of the
volume to the study of the prevention of crime. His conclusions,
however, as to the efficiency of our police, when compared with
the European police, are not flattering. He admits that this is not
altogether discouraging. He claims that a fairer basis of com-
1921.] NEW BOOKS 543
parison would be a contrast between what our police is today
and what it was ten, twenty and forty years ago. However, he
argues that this improvement has not been regular or permanent,
and alleges that the influence of politics has been the prime cause
of this condition.
This survey is complete and thorough-going in its presenta-
tion of fact, and conservative in judgment. It is a masterly
study of a most important subject, and should have the attention
of all who are interested in the betterment of American life.
DIVINE CONTEMPLATION FOR ALL. Or The Simple Art of
Communing with God. By Dom Savinien Louismet, O.S.B.
New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.80.
The Reverend author's thesis in this, as in the three pre-
ceding volumes of this series on the mystical life and prayer, is
that the terms Mysticism and Contemplation have received a
strained interpretation by modern writers and need to be brought
back to the traditional meaning attached to them in the Church.
In Divine Contemplation for All, Dom Savinien attempts to do
this for Contemplation. In his estimation Contemplation is the
simple act of communing with God and, hence, must be within
the reach of every good-living Christian soul. The book treats of
Natural and Christian Contemplation, of Bodily Worship and of
Mental Prayer, in a way that is at once simple, yet comprehensive
and within the grasp of the great body of the reading public.
Those who have been wearied, and perhaps discouraged, by some
of the modern treatises on this subject will be encouraged by this
work to start anew on their quest for union with God in this" life.
The volume is small, some one hundred and seventy-five pages,
appropriately illustrated by a colored frontispiece of Millet's
"Angelus."
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. A Survey of its Recent Literature.
By Louis Henry Jordan, B.D. (Edin.) Volume I. Second
edition, revised and augmented. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press. $4.50.
This revised and augmented work on Comparative Religion
is the first volume of a series to be published on the literature of
this interesting subject. The most important works published
between 1900 and 1909 are here reviewed and critically analyzed.
Dr. Jordan is particularly qualified to pass judgment upon the
literature of a subject which he has studied for many years, and
to which he has contributed a number of valuable works. His
criticism of the works of the period studied is judicious and
544 NEW BOOKS [July,
thorough, a valuable aid to the student of comparative religion.
The list of books analyzed is fairly complete; at least, the most
important publications of that period are brought to the student's
notice.
The author's own views are expressed in the chapter on
"Gains, Needs, and Tendencies." This addition is by no means
the least valuable portion of the book. Among other important
observations, Dr. Jordan warns scholars against a method of pro-
cedure, common in all the literature of the day as in the field of
comparative religion. Some authors too easily pass from hypo-
thetical assumptions to the acceptance of the hypothesis, fre-
quently unwarranted, as an established fact. To prevent this
danger the study of comparative religion should be dissociated
from anthropology, ethnology, etc., and be studied for itself
and in itself. The subject is so vast that it requires an inter-
national collaboration among scholars; they would do well to
divide the subject among them and at stated times compare notes,
and thus by cooperation achieve what individual students, and
even separate countries, are unable to accomplish. Catholic
scholars will agree with Dr. Jordan, that facts brought to light
in the most thorough research in the field of comparative re-
ligion will in no way be opposed to the justified claims of Chris-
tianity.
When this series is completed it will be an indispensable aid
to the student of Comparative Religion.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM. By W. Whately
Smith. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.00.
The author of this book is a member of the English Psychical
Research Society, and author of a previous work entitled, A
Theory of the Mechanism of Survival, and his latest volume was
recommended to the Anglican clergy at the recent Lambeth Con-
ference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who urged his hearers
to adopt the attitude toward the spiritualistic theory taken up
by the author. In addition to his experience as an investigator,
one who handles his subject in thoroughly scientific fashion, Mr.
Smith professes personally to believe in immortality on religious
and philosophic grounds. The conclusions, therefore, which he
presents in his book are worthy of study by all those to whom the
growth of Spiritualism, or Spiritism, as some prefer to term the
movement, seems to be one of the many serious problems of this
era of upheaval. The book is divided into three parts, namely,
"Evidence for Survival," "The Process of Communication," and
"Conclusions."
1921.] NEW BOOKS 545
The first two sections give a clear and up-to-date account of
the results of psychical research. The phenomena studied are
classified under three main heads, namely, physical phenomena;
automatisms, of which automatic handwriting is the most closely
studied type; and phenomena, such as telepathy, hallucinations
and apparitions. Typical instances of these three classes of phe-
nomena are minutely studied. Fraud as an explanation is ruled
out of court, despite the large amount of fraud which the author
admits to be present in many cases. The latent possibilities that
are still to be brought to light in the mysterious region of the sub-
conscious are given due consideration, but, as a general conclu-
sion, the author registers his opinion, "that taking into considera-
tion all the available evidence, the balance of probabilities is on
the whole in favor of the spiritualistic explanation not by any
means overwhelming, but still distinctly so."
In the section devoted to "The Process of Communication,"
the author studies the ways and means by which a discarnate in-
telligence may be supposed to attempt the exceedingly difficult
task of communicating with those still living on earth. Here the
author seeks to apply as yet unproven theories of psychology to
the elucidation of his problems, with the result that this section
is far less satisfactory than the objective study of phenomena in
the first section.
In his final section, however, the author is on safer ground
because of the fact that he uses the sum total of his experiences
and of his personal beliefs to warn all save serious and scientific
students from dabbling in this dangerous and exceedingly dubious
subject.
TALES OF AEGEAN INTRIGUE. By J. C. Lawson. New York:
E. P. Button & Go. $5.00.
At a time when the public is so surfeited with war books
that the jaded reader longs for something new, it is a privilege
as well as a pleasure to have Mr. Lawson's book placed in one's
hands. Not only is it commendable for an unusual literary
style, but its fairness and frankness make it particularly inter-
esting. For example, the author offers the following specific and
definite criticism of the British Secret Service : "It was conducted
by amateurs . . . and I, for one, never received one word of
guidance."
As the title implies, the story deals with the phases of secret
service in the islands of the ^Egean Sea, and especially in Crete,
where Mr. Lawson was stationed. In a most charming and deli-
cately humorous manner he discusses the daily routine of the
VOL. cxiu. 35
546 NEW BOOKS [July,
British Naval officers et al, and the hazardous methods of coping
with the enemy intriguers.
The book contains excellent descriptions both of characters
and places, and the author possesses the ability to convey the
atmosphere of suppressed excitement prevalent in the ^Egean
environment. His diplomatic acumen, as well as his ingenuity,
has enabled him to writes Tales which sustain the reader's in-
terest, and which warrant a second reading.
THE GREENWAY. By Leslie Moore. New York: P. J. Kenedy
& Sons. $2.35.
There is a certain faint suggestion of Jane Austen in this
story about Miss Dacre, the English maiden lady past her first
youth, who had been a companion to a wealthy old woman and
inherited from her a lovely cottage and grounds in the country
"The Greenway." But just before she learned of her good for-
tune and went down from London to take possession, a pleasant
little adventure befell when she met, quite casually one evening,
the Artist and the Cynic. The Artist was handsome, clever, and
absurdly young, and the Cynic, who was sympathetically nearer
her own age, was really not a cynic at all, but, as the upshot
conclusively proves, an exceedingly fine and noble character.
Moreover, the Artist's wealthy uncle, from whom he is estranged,
lives near "The Greenway," and, more important still, the Cynic,
who has a title, also has his seat conveniently near.
The Grey Lady, as the heroine is whimsically styled by her
two chance acquaintances, being sweet, gentle, and kind, what
wonder when she reaches "The Greenway" that she effects a
reconciliation between uncle and nephew, visits the cottagers,
takes long walks on the moor, brings cheerfulness to sad hearts,
and in general conducts herself as a well-bred English heroine
usually does. And as for her mild little romance, that too is quite
in the accepted order.
The story should appeal to all those who do not care for an
excessive amount of excitement in their fiction.
WIND AND BLUE WATER. By Laura Armistead Carter. Bos-
ton: The Cornhill Co. $1.25.
The War poems are not in any sense the best in this collec-
tion, but there is an admirable and martial note in the more
peaceful verses. In fact, this note, alternating with and strength-
ening the feminine virtue of a subtle intuition, raises the little
book above the average of contemporary "minors and very
1921.] NEW BOOKS 547
IRELAND AND THE EARLY CHURCH. By J. M. Flood. Dublin:
The Talbot Press, Ltd. 3 s. 6 d. net.
This is still another of the many books which are coming
from the press in Ireland today: books on art and on history;
books of poetry; books dealing with religion, economics, science,
belles lettres; which books constitute one of the many wonderful
signs of the depth and breadth, and permanent quality of Irish
nationalism, Irish patriotism, and, best of all, Irish Faith. That,
during a time when the whole land is darkened by a terror more
awful than has spread over the sorrowful isle since the days of
Cromwell or the famine, there should be such a widespread and
abundant literature, is surely one of Ireland's most potent ap-
peals to the sympathy and consideration of other peoples. The
book in question deals with the roots and origins of Catholicism
in Ireland, and is based upon a thesis expressed in the following
words: "The ease with which Christianity took possession of
Ireland, as compared with the process of its growth elsewhere,
has often been noted and warrants the assumption that the char-
acter and institutions of the people were in the main favorable to
its teachings and affected the nature and course of its growth
amongst us." The book is brief, but is full of information, and
the short chapters dealing with such subjects as "The Rise of
Monasticism," "The Legend of St. Brandan," "The Poetry of the
Early Church," "St. Adamnan," "Ireland and the Celtic Church,"
make fascinating reading.
LE DROIT INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POSITIF. By J. De
Louter. Oxford : University Press. Two volumes. 22 s. net.
During the course of the nineteenth century, treatises on
international law became increasingly "positive" in character.
Authors attempted to state in as clear and precise terms as pos-
sible the rules actually observed by the nations, and no longer
felt it incumbent upon them, as was the case with the older
authorities, to dwell upon the abstract moral principles which
should govern nations by contrast with those which in fact did
govern them. Professor De Louter's work belongs to this "posi-
tivist school." Originally published in Dutch in 1910, it is now
reproduced in a French translation, made by the author himself,
and sets forth in great wealth of detail and with ample historical
background the variety of rules presented by international cus-
toms and treaties.
The author is conscious of the fact that his work is already
out of date, but believes that it is well for the nations to have
before them a faithful statement of international law such as
548 NEW BOOKS [July,
it was at the time it was subjected to its fatal test. His task has
been well carried out, and within its limits it is deserving of high
praise; but it would seem that there is greater need of a critical
treatise setting forth the defects of existing international law and
the amendments which must be made to it if it is to become the
basis of peace and justice in the world.
THE CHILDREN'S STORY GARDEN. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott Co. $1.50 net.
The foreword of this volume, published by a Committee of the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, of which Anna Pettit
Broomell is chairman, gives its purpose and effect very fairly:
The Children's Story Garden announces its purpose at once.
Its stories have the direct aim of teaching ethics and religious
truth to children. The theory appears to be prevalent that chil-
dren's books should not be burdened with too much distinction
between right and wrong, and that a story cannot have the primary
elements of unity, sustained interest, and surprise if it is based on
religious faith or the love of God working in the human heart.
This unfortunate tendency, perhaps, is a reaction from the old
type of "goody-goody" or "Sunday-school" story which had strong
claims to morals but very little to art. Any collection which will
dispel the idea that stories which teach morals must be dull, we
are sure will be gladly welcomed by both parents and teachers.
HALF LOAVES. By Margaret Culkin Banning. New York:
George H. Doran Co. $1.90 net.
Cecily and Florence married their opposites, and the husband
of each seemed better fitted to be the husband of the other. Cecily
lived on a height, and made it hard for Dick because he could
not maintain continued existence on the same. The fine husband
of the little worldly-minded "Fliss" was unable to give her the
love she learned to crave. The writer subtly shows this union
of contradictions to be the means of broadening, deepening, and
bringing out the best in each of the wives who suffered and
came near the danger-point of separation or divorce.
The book will be read with enjoyment by everyone who loves
a good story merely for the story's sake. It will also interest
those who like to study the psychology of current fiction. The
scene where the outraged ideals of a fine and sensitive woman
goad her into cruelty and insult towards the other, and the futil-
ity of her attempt to wound, resulting only in suffering to her-
self, is effectively and daringly handled.
There are lovely glimpses of schoolgirl life in a convent, of
1921.] NEW BOOKS 549
its training in that tranquillity which is the fruit of turning over
to God the solution of tangles, of the deep understanding of clois-
tered nuns concerning life in the world. All this, and more, will
be appreciated by Catholic readers.
EFFICIENCY IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. By Sister M. Cecilia.
New York: Frederick Pustet Co. $1.50.
Sanctity is usually conceived of as a quiet, mysterious growth
in the interior life of the soul. The application, then, of modern
efficiency methods to increase God's grace, the standardized pro-
duction of virtue, or the discovery of "short cuts" along the road
to Heaven, may at first sight seem paradoxical. But the greater
paradox is that our modern principles of worldly success are only
adaptations of our traditional rules of asceticism. There can be
but one form of spirituality that practised by the saints. But
the age-old principles of sanctity may be expressed in modern
terms, and thus, by the use of familiar commercial images, may
make a deeper impression on contemporary minds. In this sense,
this book is a real discovery. The author has taken over bodily
a much advertised "Course in Efficiency," and has cleverly drawn
the parallel between its principles and those of the spiritual life.
The book is intended primarily for religious, but all seekers after
the higher life may draw great fruit from it.
THE SISTERS-IN-LAW. By Gertrude Atherton. New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.00 net.
Mrs. Atherton's latest novel tells the story of the love felt
for Richard Gathbroke, by Alexina Dwight and her discarded hus-
band's sister, Gora. It opens with the San Francisco earthquake,
and closes in France shortly after the Armistice, both women
having engaged in war work, while Gathbroke served at the
Front. These are stupendous backgrounds whereon to depict
action which resolves itself first into a study of San Francisco
society, then into the wordy solution of the purely personal prob-
lem of the trio. It is the unimpressive Gathbroke who contributes
the one link that forms a real connection between the War and
the main theme. In declaring to Alexina that she is his irrevo-
cable choice, he says: "Life was given to us for the highest
happiness of which we are individually capable," a gem of phil-
osophy he has gained after a hideous experience in the trenches.
The speech represents Mrs. Atherton's views: indeed, the book
seems to have been written for that purpose. Her vigorous,
shrewd, cynical observations upon the War, and upon war in
general, are entitled to respectful hearing by virtue of her own
550 NEW BOOKS [July,
fine war record. It is melancholy, however, to see that not even
the world's tragedy has effected a breach in her narrow, iron-
bound limitations. To her, mind and body still constitute the
whole human make-up. As a rule, she has hitherto kept within
the borders of her mental vision; but in the present instance she
has ventured upon contemptuous, offensive definition of what she
is pleased to term "the much vaunted recrudescence of the re-
ligious spirit." In so doing, she displays the superciliousness,
born of ignorance, that automatically excludes every ray of en-
lightenment.
The book is not uninteresting; but it is fragmentary in con-
struction, and labors under all the disadvantages which attend
fiction when used as a vehicle for opinions.
VICTOIRE DE SAINT-LUG: A MARTYR UNDER THE TERROR,
by Mother St. Patrick of La Retraite du Sacre Coeur. With fore-
word by the Rev. G. C. Martindale, S.J. (New York: Longsmans, Green
& Co. $1.40). Father Martindale's. introduction, one of the sort we
have learned to expect from him, is so well done that it is scarcely
necessary to do more than quote him in calling attention to the merits
of the work under review. It is written, as he says, "with a beautiful
simplicity and reticence;'* "it shows us the tremendously strong cur-
rent of Catholic life that circulated in that old pre-Revolution France
which we are apt to think so irreligious;" and it gives us some idea of
"the very remarkable organization of those retreats which we believe
today to be of such value for the preservation and development of
Catholic life among ourselves."
The sketch is particularly apropos at this time, since Victoire de
Saint-Luc met martyrdom by reason of her devotion to the Sacred
Heart. She faced death cheerfully, as did the rest of that bright band
who climbed the ladder to Heaven in those troubled days. Her dust
has mingled with that of the Carmelites of Compiegne in the little
cemetery of Picpus, where more than one martyr of the Terror awaits
the Resurrection.
MOTHER MARY GONZAGA, by a Sister of Mercy, Convent of Mercy,
Manchester, N. H. (Manchester, N. H.: The Magnificat Press.
$1.00). The Community at Manchester has placed the public in its
debt by putting out this extremely readable and tastefully printed little
volume at a price that makes possible its perusal by many who, other-
wise, might be obliged to forego that very genuine pleasure. Mother
Gonzaga's earthly pilgrimage was a long one. It began with Mallow,
County Cork, and ended in the Sisters' burial plot in St. Joseph's
cemetery, Manchester, N. H. It covered a span of eighty-six years,
during which she lived to see her Order grow from a handful of
brave-hearted women, under the leadership of that pioneer nun, Mother
1921.] NEW BOOKS 551
M. Xavier Warde, to a company of many hundreds of Sisters, toiling
from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf to Canada.
In all this Mother Gonzaga herself bore no mean part. It would be
difficult to conceive of man or woman whose activities were more
varied or productive. She was at different times, and often at the
same time, educator, social worker, organizer, and guide to individual
souls. The story, as given in these pages, is graphically and concisely
told. It is interesting both because of the Sister whose fame it cele-
brates and its descriptions of the scenes amidst which her life was
passed. There is a short, but eloquent, preface to the biography,
written by Mother Gonzaga's ordinary, the Right Rev. George A.
Guertin, D.D.
THE DIARY OF A FORTY-NINER, edited by Ghauncey L. Canfield
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.), is the genuine diary of a young
New Englander who came to California during the gold rush days to
seek his fortune. It is a rambling unpretentious record of daily hap-
penings and gives an accurate account of the life of the mines in those
early times. The people referred to actually existed, and many of the
incidents noted in the diary have been verified by old-timers still
living.
Nothing is too unimportant to be set down. We read of the cur-
rent cost of food, the successive steps in gold mining, the gossip, often
scandalous, of neighbors and comrades. The diary reflects the miner's
dislike of the Chinese, "who would soon overrun the country," were
they not kept in their place a feeling which has its sequel in the anti-
Japanese agitation of today. Not the least interesting part of the book
is the author's growing love for the young "Papist" Frenchwoman and
the romance's happy termination.
The diarist appears to have been a very ordinary person of some-
what limited experience and education. He is broadened by his Cali-
fornia life and becomes more kindly and charitable towards his
fellowmen, while through his friendship with his partner, "Pard," a
famous lawyer of pioneer times, he learns to appreciate the beauty
of great literature and the wonders of the Sierras, where they worked.
This unconscious development of the writer makes the record a very
human one, and because of its undoubted authenticity it is a valuable
contribution to our stock of western pioneer literature.
FAITH AND DUTY, a course of Lessons on the Apostles' Creed and
the Ten Commandments for children of eight to ten years, by
Judith F. Smith. (New York: Benziger Brothers. $2.50.) Year by
year the principles and methods of pedagogy are being applied to the
teaching of religion in our parish and Sunday-schools with the best of
results. The present volume is a contribution to the various manuals
for catechists that have been issued of late as a result of the introduc-
tion of scientific methods. Children who enjoy the privilege of being
taught their religion by conscientious and well-informed teachers
552 NEW BOOKS [July,
along the lines sketched in this volume, will not find it the drudgery
it used so often to be, and they will have that practical grasp of their
religion, so necessary in these days. The method followed by the
author is based on sound principles of pedagogy and includes the use
of blackboards and other apparatus for the proper and interest-inspir-
ing presentation of the subject matter, together with memory work
based on the Catechism, and expression work. The references to the
Catechism in the memory work are evidently to a foreign Catechism
and, therefore, will not be helpful to the American teacher. These
references are not essential, but it is unfortunate that, being intended
for American children, the Catechism of the Council of Baltimore
should not have been supplied.
SURPRISES OF LIFE, by Georges Clemenceau (translated by Grace
Hall). (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.90.) The grim
old victory Premier of France, Clemenceau, is presented to American
readers in this book in the guise of a skillful, ironical, and, at times,
an even tender delineator of French rural life and characters. The
book contains twenty-five brief stories and sketches, the scenes of
which are mostly laid in the writer's native region of the Vendee.
Several of the stories are regrettably spiced and larded with rather
obvious and trite references to the anti-clerical prejudices, which in
the political field the author has cultivated so assiduously; yet, even
so, there is to be felt in his portraits of some of these rural cures, who
come and go through his pages, evidences of that human sympathy for,
and appreciation of, religious persons, if not of religious dogmas,
which Clemenceau betokened, to the amazement of his anti-clerical
confreres, when he came to the helm of the ship of state in France
during the stormiest days of the War.
LIVING AGAIN, by Charles Reynolds Brown (New York: Harvard
University Press. $1.00), presents the Ingersoll Lecture on Im-
mortality for 1920. To this series of lectures many distinguished
modern thinkers have contributed, including William James, Josiah
Royce, John Fiske, G. Lowes Dickinson, and Wilhelm Ostwald. The
author is dean of the Divinity School of the Yale University, and ap-
proaches his subject from a Protestant standpoint, the expression of
which, however, is firm and steadfast in its faith in a personal life
beyond death, even although there is a characteristic vagueness and
sentimentality attached to many of these eloquent pages.
/CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN AND RELIGIOUS PERFECTION, by
Vx the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, Metuchen, N. J. $1.25. This
treatise, in the question and answer form of a catechism, is on the
religious life as understood by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. It
discusses the preparation for the religious life, the religious profession,
the religious life itself, the triple devotion indispensable to a religion :
Devotion to the Sacred Heart, to the Blessed Virgin and to St. Joseph.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 553
Its final chapters deal with the ideal religious. The book contains
a great deal of information on the subjects treated and numerous apt
quotations from the saints and spiritual writers. Its main usefulness,
of course, will be as a textbook for postulants and novices in religion,
but those seeking information on the religious life will find it helpful.
SERMONS AND NOTES OF SERMONS, by Henry Ignatius Dudley
Rider, Priest of the Birmingham Oratory. (St. Louis: B. Herder
Book Co. $2.50.) Those who knew of Father Ryder as the erudite
theologian, the true Christian poet, and the accomplished literary
artist, will turn to these sermons with eager interest. They are what
one would expect Father Ryder's sermons to be the overflow of a
deeply religious nature. Simple, solid discourses, they are faithful
to the best Oratorian tradition requiring the sons of St. Philip Neri to
preach "in a useful and popular way." Some are chiseled composi-
tions, others are mere sketches, but all are the fruit of a cultured
spirit replenished from the unfailing fonts of the supernatural.
OUR GREAT WAR AND THE WAR OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS, by
Gilbert Murray (New York: Thomas Seltzer). In this little book,
which reprints its distinguished author's Creighton Lecture of 1918,
a study is made of the criticisms based on the war leaders of Athens
by their contemporary opponents in the days when Cleon was, so to
speak, the Lloyd George of his time, and was waging the Pelopon-
nesian War. These criticisms show that human nature, and the
problems human beings, for the most part, struggle with so vainly
were much the same thousands of years ago as now. In reading this
book all that would be needed to make it apply to our own Great War
would be a slight change of name or a transposition of terms. In the
Athens of that day there were the pacifists, and the profiteers, the
militarists, and the propagandists, the secret service men, and the de-
luded public, the patriots and the traitors, all playing parts in a drama,
in the Athens of the classic age, very much the same as we have wit-
nessed in our own days in New York or London, Washington or Paris.
The book is written with Gilbert Murray's accustomed charm of style.
THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING, by Tancredo Pinochet (New
York: Boni & Liveright. $2.50 net). Miss Mabel Jones, an expert
linguist, accepts a position with the Government during the War as a
translator in the Spanish Department of the Censor's Office in New
York. In the course of her official duties she reads a letter from a
South American living in Chicago to his wife in Santiago, Chile. The
letter is bitter in its denunciation of conditions here in the United
States. Miss Jones takes the liberty to add to this letter her criticism
of the observations of the writer, and sends both to the South American
destination. Other letters follow and the censor continues to combat
the impressions the writer would convey. The book is interesting and
novel in its presentation. Its arguments, on both sides, however, are
554 NEW BOOKS [July,
open to serious objections. The statements regarding the effects of the
Catholic religion in South America can be ascribed only to ignorance,
or worse, prejudice.
MADDALENA'S DAY AND OTHER SKETCHES, by Laura Wolcott
(New Haven: Yale University Press. $1.50). Travel sketches,
ranging in setting from storied Italy and sunny Provence to Holland
and the North Sea, make up two-thirds of this little book; the smaller
portion consists of five legends out of the past, if legends they may be
called. All are marked by sympathetic observation and delicate
humor. The sympathy of observation is extended to the Catholic
atmosphere, which is an integral part of life in Catholic countries,
but the sympathy lacks that fullness of understanding which alone could
save it from smacking of condescension. The "Brief for Mistress
Socrates" is a delicious skit, and manages to carry along with it some
much weaker brethren.
THE NOISE OF THE WORLD, by Adriana Spadoni (New York:
Boni & Liveright. $2.00), is the story of two young people, pure-
hearted and obstinately idealistic, who get married in one of the
early chapters, and afterwards become better acquainted but with
consequences far from the betterment of the acquaintance. Nothing
unusual in such a theme, but much that is unusual in its strong and
skillful handling, which brings to it the charm of novelty.
TE PRIVILEGE OF PAIN, by Mrs. Leo Everett. (Boston: Small,
Maynard & Co.) It is to be earnestly hoped that this brochure's
arresting title will bring it to the attention it justly deserves, yet might
easily fail to receive, on account of its small and unimpressive outward
form. Mrs. Everett deals with a present-day phenomenon that some
of us have been watching with puzzled dismay: the wide, increasing
insistence, as upon an established fact, of physical health as a prime
essential without which nothing can be accomplished. That this is,
in reality, a theory which has been steadily confuted by the world's
experience throughout the ages; that our greatest men and women have
most effectively demonstrated the contrary; that to those who will to
conquer, pain may become a teacher and a power conferring gifts of
keenness and concentration that not only reduce it to a negligible ad-
versary, but, also justify calling it a privilege, are solid, inspiring
truths here presented afresh and forcefully. The author has com-
piled classified lists of those who, handicapped by physical disable-
ment, have reached the topmost pinnacles of greatness in the arts and
professions, in soldiering as well as saintship. It is an imposing array.
Mrs. Everett's comments and expositions of her own views are com-
pact of sound sense exceedingly well expressed; and the whole content
offers food for thought to those who, from sheer lack of thinking,
have fallen into popular error. An introduction by Kate Douglas
Wiggiji adds to the interest.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 555
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Interesting biographies are General et Trappiste (P. Marie-Joseph
Baron de Geramb) by Dom A. M. P. Ingold; Vie de la Mere Marie-
Madeleine Ponnet (First Superior of the Visitation of Lyon-Vassieux) ;
Lettres de Henri Perreyve a Un Ami d'Enfance 1847-1865 (Eleventh
Edition); Une Francaise d' Alsace: Melle. Louise Humann, the soul
friend and counselor of Mme. Swetchine, and probable inspiration
of the work of Notre Dame de Sion, by Mme. Paul Fliche all pub-
lished by Pierre Tequi; Saint Gregoire VII., by M. Augustin Fliche,
the best brief life of the great mediaeval Pontiff written in recent
years (Victor Lecoffre) ; Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, by P. L. H. Petitot, O.P.,
belongs to the realm of pure history rather than hagiography
(Gabriel Beauchesne) ; from the same publisher, Une Educatrice an
XVII-e Siecle, by A. de Nitray, the life of the Venerable Anne de Xainc-
tonge of the Ursulines of Dole, a true Christian feminist, especially
interesting to educators. Of special appeal also to educators are Les
Idees Pedagogiqu.es de Saint Pierre Fourier, by J. Renault and Les
Idees Pedagogiques de la Bienheureuse Mere Julie Billiart, by Marie
Halcant, both published by P. Lethielleux. A Marian anthology drawn
by P. Eugene Roupain, S.J., from the greatest names in religious liter-
ature is La Vierge Toute Belle (P. Lethielleux). For the lovers of Mary
the Abbe de Cazales, gives us the Vie de la Sainte Vierge, taken from
the meditations of Catherine Emmerich (Pierre Tequi). La Morale
Chretienne, by Abbe H. Toublan, gives an excellent expose of the Deca-
logue, logical, interesting and passably original. Some of the practical
conclusions are, however, somewhat formal and ill-considered (P.
Lethielleux) . Another work on morals is the eighteenth volume of Pere
Janvier's conferences, Exposition de la Morale Catholique, devoted to
the "Virtue of Fortitude," showing the breadth and sureness of doc-
trine, perfect arrangement, simple, yet majestic style characteristic
of the series (P. Lethielleux). Le Divin Meconnu is the significant
and striking title of a work of Monseigneur Landrieux on the action of
the Holy Ghost in the Church, in souls, and the nature of His seven
divine gifts. A real spiritual treatise for the use of young men is
Du College au Manage (P. Lethielleux), extracts from the writings of
Louis Veuillot. A chapter is devoted to marriage and an appendix to
unhappy marriages. Futurs Epoux, by Abbe Charles Grimaud (P.
Tequi), has also in mind the "great sacrament" of marriage. Two
spiritual works published by Lethielleux for children are Dans Le
Silence et Dans La Priere, an important study of the discipline of
obedience, the control of feelings, the upbuilding of character; and
Allons d Dieu, by Y. d'Isne, short meditations for every day. For
priests instructing children we have Retraite d'Enfants, by Abbe
Morice, and Retraites de Communion Solennelle, by Canon Jean Vaudon
(Pierre Tequi). A study of the social problems now engrossing Indus-
trial Labor the world over, is Problemes Sociaux du Travail Industriel,
by Max Turmann, well known to readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. In
the field of literature, J. de Tonquedec has made an interesting study of
G. K. Chesterton, the Christian apologist, playful, religious, whimsical*
sincere.
F. Ranch of Innsbruck brings out two works for priests: De
Poenis Ecclesiasticis, by H. Noldin, S.J., adapted by A. Schonegger,
S.J., and Repetitorium Theologize Fundamentalis, by P. Virgilio Wass,
O.M.Cap. And from P. Marietti, Turin, we have the Examen Confes-
sariorum, by C. Carbone, and De Sacramentis, Volume I., by F. M.
Cappello.
IRecent Events.
From the middle of May to the present
Germany. date, the Silesian problem has continued to
be the outstanding feature of the European
situation. The chief events during this period have been:
On May 18th Lloyd George reiterated his previously ex-
pressed view that the fate of Silesia must be decided according
to the Versailles Treaty and by the Supreme Council, not by
Adelbert Korfanty, leader of the Polish insurrection; and on the
same date the American Government declined the Polish request
for intervention. On May 23d the first clash between the Ger-
mans and Poles occurred along the Oder, especially in the vicin-
ity of Krappitz, the Poles being driven back in some places a dis-
tance of five miles. Several days later a number of British bat-
talions entered Silesia to suppress the insurgents, and an armis-
tice was concluded between the Germans and Poles pending the
disposition of the British forces. Almost immediately, however,
hostilities were resumed.
On June 2d an attack by the Germans upon the French gar-
rison at Beuthen, accused by the Germans of aiding the Poles,
was put down by the French with considerable German losses.
Sporadic fighting between Germans and Polish forces continued
for almost a week, when the French issued an ultimatum declar-
ing that, if the German troops which had advanced several kilo-
metres on the Annaberg sector following insurgent attacks did
not withdraw, French troops in the industrial section, which had
been protecting the German population there, would be with-
drawn. A late telegram says that General Hofer, commanding
the Germans, has stopped his attack, although he refuses to with-
draw his troops from the part of the territory he holds. Owing
to a change in Allied plans, however, the French did not carry out
their threat of evacuation.
It is learned from British sources that the probable plan for
pacification will be to garrison all the large industrial towns in
the plebiscite area with British troops, for which it is said that
sufficient forces are available. The French, on the other hand,
have proposed that all available troops be distributed between the
German and Polish lines, thus establishing a neutral zone and al-
lowing the situation to adjust itself. British officials, however,
favor following a plan calling for an active effort for disarma-
ment and the reestablishment of order in both the Polish and
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 557
German districts. Latest dispatches state that the neutral zone
has been established, and also that the British have occupied
Rosenberg, twenty miles northeast of Oppeln, initiating a big
flanking and frontal push, having as its objective the suppression
of the Polish insurgents and the restoration of the police and
governmental powers to their lawful wielders under the Versailles
Treaty, namely the Inter-Allied Plebiscite Commission. There is
some talk of possible Anglo-Italian cooperation, without the
French, along these lines. The discipline of the insurgents under
Korfanty is reported to be crumbling.
As a result of the unfavorable turn of events in Silesia, the
Polish Premier Witos, late in May, tendered his resignation to
President Pilsudski. Earlier in the month, Foreign Minister
Sapieha resigned. President Pilsudski has declared his deter-
mination to oppose any violation of the Versailles Treaty by Polish
armed forces, and to seek a settlement of the trouble by negotia-
tion. Owing to the unsettled state of affairs, the Polish mark on
May 29th reached its lowest level, being quoted at one thousand
marks to the dollar.
With respect to German internal affairs, the new Cabinet,
and particularly its head, Chancellor Wirth, have won for them-
selves a very strong position not only in Germany, but among the
Allies as well. This has resulted chiefly from the firm stand of
the Chancellor, who on all occasions has affirmed his intention of
seeing that Germany pays what is due the Allies, and to this end
would summon to his assistance all the financial and industrial
leaders of Germany. The most important step in this last respect
was the selection on May 28th of Dr. Walter Rathenau, president
of the German General Electric Company, for the post of Minister
of Reconstruction. Earlier in the month, Dr. Friedrich Rosen,
German envoy at The Hague, was appointed Foreign Minister.
On May 31st Chancellor Wirth outlined his programme to the
Reichstag, particularly in regard to reparations, Upper Silesia,
and the French policy in the Rhineland, and several days later the
Reichstag voted confidence in the Government by a vote of 213 to
77, with 48 members not voting. The vote of confidence was on
the question of approval of the Chancellor's declaration regard-
ing fulfillment of the Allied ultimatum. A second section of the
same resolution, dealing with the Government's attitude towards
the Upper Silesian question, was passed also by a large majority.
The Reichstag thereupon entered upon a ten-day recess, during
which the Ministry is to draft tax and other financial measures it
deems necessary for fulfillment of the ultimatum obligations.
That the Government is fully resolved to act promptly and
558 RECENT EVENTS [July,
decisively in carrying out its promises, has been shown on sev-
eral occasions. On May 25th, in response to an Allied protest,
the Government took strict measures to suppress all recruiting
offices for the Free Corps of Silesia, and instituted proceedings
against several high railway officials at Dresden for not inter-
cepting trains carrying recruits.
Even more important has been the Government's action with
regard to reparations and disarmament. On May 30th Germany
completed payment of the one billion gold marks due Jne 1st
as the first payment on reparations under the Peace Treaty, and
on June 7th the Reparations Commission announced that up to
that date Germany had paid an additional 40,000 marks in excess
of the quota. Nineteen $10,000,000 notes, less this 40,000
marks excess, remain to be paid in the next ten weeks. It is an-
nounced that a special conference will soon be held in Paris to
settle the operation of the priority to which Belgium has the right
in the German payments. The Treaty gives Belgium the right
to the first 2,500,000,000 marks, but it is understood that Belgium
will consent to modifications, so that she will receive only a part
of the first billion marks that have been paid.
The greatest difficulty in the matter of disarmament was
experienced with regard to the Bavarian Einwohnerwehr, or citi-
zens' guard. The first step by the Berlin Government towards
the dissolution of this and other Bavarian forces was taken on
May 18th, when Berlin addressed a note to the Bavarian Govern-
ment in which it was made plain that all so-called self-defence
organizations must be disbanded. After much negotiation and
pressure, both from Berlin and the Allies, the Einwohnerwehr
finally agreed to disarm voluntarily by June 30th under the terms
of the Allied ultimatum.
The trial of German war criminals, as provided in the Ver-
sailles Treaty, opened in the Supreme Court at Leipsic on May
23d and concluded temporarily on June 4th, as there were no
more British cases ready for presentment. In the cases of three
of the defendants nominal sentences were imposed; while in the
case of the fourth there was an acquittal. The cases were poorly
selected and were badly supported by evidence. The Court, how-
ever, was generally commended by the British for its fairness
and impartiality.
On June 6th the Council of Ambassadors, sitting at Paris,
sent a letter, signed by Premier Briand as President, taking cog-
nizance of the good-will of the German Government in its efforts
to fulfill its undertakings under the Peace Treaty. In the letter
the Council granted Germany a delay, until September 30th, for
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 559
the transformation of the Diesel motors from submarine use to
civilian industry.
Despite several protests by the Allies, and repeated threats of
intervention by the Central Austrian Government, Salzburg, Aus-
tria, persisted in holding a referendum on May 30th on the ques-
tion of fusion with Germany. The total vote showed 67,533 in
favor of and 677 against fusion. In order to relieve the Austrian
Government of the onus, the explanation was made that the refer-
endum was unofficial and was being taken under the private
auspices of the three dominant parties in the province. Like the
recent vote in Tyrol, which also voted in favor of fusion, the vote
was for the avowed purpose of ascertaining the popular sentiment
on the question of the Federal Government approaching the
League of Nations for the privilege of self-determination. Dr.
Mayr, the Austrian Chancellor, in his endeavors to stay the plebis-
cite, held that the whole question of Allied credits for Austria
was threatened by this inopportune unionist agitation. Directly
after the referendum, the entire Austrian Cabinet, which took
office on November 20th last, handed in their resignations.
The most significant feature of the French
France. political situation during the last month
has been the French change of attitude to-
ward Germany, consequent on the efforts of the new German Cab-
inet to meet Allied demands. Immediately following Germany's
closing of the eastern frontier, to prevent the passage of troops
into Silesia late in May, and her promise to disband volunteer
forces forming in Eastern Germany, Premier Briand withdrew his
threat to occupy the Ruhr Valley. Since then, Minister of War
Barthou has announced the demobilization of the class of 1919,
composed of about 150,000 twenty-year old men whom Premier
Briand had suddenly called to the colors on May 1st. This action
eased the tension between the French and English Governments,
which had been growing steadily since the rise of the Polish in-
surrection and the strong declaration of Lloyd George that it
should be suppressed even at the cost of German aid.
Accused by his opponents of weakness and of subservience
to the British, Briand, on May 26th, expressed his trust in Chan-
cellor Wirth, his refusal to break the Entente, and in general
declared himself in favor of a policy of moderation. After a
three days' debate, the Chamber of Deputies indorsed the Gov-
ernment's policy by a vote of 419 against 171. On May 31st the
Senate likewise voted its confidence by a vote of 277 to 8. The
crystallization of the French foreign policy is now regarded as
560 RECENT EVENTS [July,
more complete than at any time since the Treaty of Versailles was
signed. The action of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate
has been backed by public opinion, enunciated in the press, which
indicates that France is unanimous for M. Briand's firm stand
that France, while maintaining the right to assume a certain inde-
pendence in her Continental policy, must continue to accept the
counsel of her Allies in dealing with Germany.
In furtherance of this closing of the breach between England
and France, discussion has recently sprung up on both sides of
the Channel in favor of a new military and political alliance be-
tween the two countries. It is felt that the present system of
irregular meetings of the Supreme Council with regard to special
problems is unsatisfactory, and that the time is approaching when
there should be a general liquidation of questions outstanding be-
tween the two countries and an agreement on Allied policy on
such widely separated problems as Silesia, Austria, the Near East,
and the Ruhr. This discussion has been wholly unofficial, how-
ever, and the fate of the project is largely dependent on the Amer-
ican attitude towards what, in effect, would be a return to the
old system of pre-War alliances, and would make the success of
the League of Nations, or of any association of nations, difficult.
Though the American Government has not indicated how it
would regard such an alliance, the position of the new Adminis-
tration towards the League of Nations was made clear in a speech
in London on May 29th by the new American Ambassador, Col-
onel George Harvey. In this speech Ambassador Harvey declared
definitely that the United States "would not have anything what-
soever to do with the League or with any commission or commit-
tee appointed by it or responsible to it, directly or indirectly,
openly or furtively." He also announced his appointment, as
President Harding's representative, on the Supreme Council of
the Allies to cooperate towards an European settlement.
In line with this policy, the American Government has in-
structed Roland W. Boyden to resume his seat on the Reparations
Commission, and has given him an assistant to act as unofficial
observer on the Guarantees Committee of the Commission. In ad-
dition the American Government has decided to aid the Allies in
solving the Austrian financial problem in so far as this assistance
does not involve the United States in matters of purely European
concern. An Inter-Allied conference for the consideration of
ways and means of improving economic conditions in Central and
Southern Europe, will be held on June 15th at Porto Rosa, near
Trieste, and at this meeting the United States, as one of Austria's
heaviest creditors, will be unofficially represented.
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 561
Despite American repudiation of the League, its various com-
mittees are still functioning. Of these the most important is the
Finance Committee which after an eight-day session in London,
closing May 30th, evolved a plan to aid Austria. One essential
condition for the success of the plan is, that the Governments
entitled to reparations under the Treaty of St. Germain and to
the repayment of loans granted for relief purposes, shall postpone
their claims for twenty years, and that any fresh loans contracted
during the first five years of that term shall have priority over
these liens. Partial assurances that this will be done have been
received from Great Britain, France, Japan and Czecho-Slovakia.
As for the Austrians, they must agree to balance their budget,
abolish their food subsidies, cut down their huge Civil Service,
and try to remove the customs barriers which have grown up
between Austria and the territories which formerly belonged to
her. Once these conditions have been accepted, the Committee,
which is composed not of politicians, but of expert financiers,
recommends that temporary loans be granted to Austria to help
her over her present crisis, that a strong bank of issue be built up
to retire all existing paper money and to issue a new series under
proper control, and that a large permanent loan be floated.
On June 7th, one year after its signing, the French Chamber
ratified the Treaty of Trianon, which established peace between
the Allies and Hungary. In anticipation of this act, Hungary,
shortly beforehand, made formal application to the Secretariat
of the League of Nations for admission to the League. The ap-
plication will be placed on the agenda of the assembly, which will
meet in September.
Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General of the League, on
June 2d, received from the acting Premier of Australia a telegram
informing him that the Australian Government, on May 8th last,
established a civil administration in the former German colony
of New Guinea, a mandate over this territory having been allotted
by the Supreme Council to the King of England, to be exercised
in his name by the Australian Government. On May 31st
Czecho-Slovakia gave its adherence to the International Court of
Justice, created by the League of Nations.
Negotiations being conducted at Brussels by a Commission of
the League, between Lithuanian and Polish delegates, over the
occupation of Vilna by the Polish General Zellgouski, were sud-
denly discontinued on June 2d. Poland insisted that the confer-
ence should be attended by delegates from Vilna, who would have
equal rights with the other delegates. The Lithuanians opposed
this on the ground that, as Vilna was under the domination of
VOL. cxui. 36
562 RECENT EVENTS [July,
Zellgouski, any delegates chosen to represent Vilna specifically
would be inclined to favor Poland, and that Lithuania would be
outvoted. The whole issue has now been turned back again to
the Council of the League of Nations.
The meeting of the Armaments Commission of the League,
which was originally set for May and was postponed to June 20th,
has again been postponed to July 10th. It is understood that this
action was due to the United States Senate resolution, authorizing
the President to enter into a conference with Great Britain and
Japan concerning reduction of the naval expenditures and build-
ing programmes of the three nations. The Armaments Com-
mission will take into consideration the proposed conference
which is to be held in Washington.
The annual congress of the French Railroaders' Brotherhood
suddenly ended on June 2d after a series of heated discussions
on the question whether or not to adhere to Moscow. The vote
was 53,677 against and 55,140 in favor of the motion, thus putting
control in the hands of the pro-Bolsheviki. A scene of general
disorder followed, ending by the retirement of the more moderate
element. The split exactly parallels those which have already
occurred in the Socialist Party and other Labor Federations, the
result being that the political influence of Labor is nullified, since
the two parties are of almost equal strength.
The congress of Russian manufacturers and business men,
sitting in Paris, closed its session on May 24th with the adoption
of thirteen resolutions of an economic and political character.
One of the resolutions warned foreign capitalists against the po-
litical and economic complications bound to follow the reestab-
lishment in Russia of a legal Government, which would decline
to acknowledge the Bolshevik concessions. Another resolution
recognized the tangible character of the Russian debt, both in-
ternal and external, and declared that the first duty of a legal
Russian Government would be to satisfy all the nation's creditors'
whether Russians or foreigners.
Towards the end of May, Eastern Siberia,
Russia. with Vladivostok as the centre, became the
scene of a series of conflicts, between rival
Russian military interests, the final issue of which is still in doubt.
The first event of the series began on May 27th, when Vladivostok,
which for some time has been under the control of a sort of
Socialistic Government, fell into the hands of the troops of the
late General Kappel. The Kappel forces, which are anti-BoIshe-
vlk and are remnants of the former army of Admiral Kolchak,
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 563
were led by General Verzihbitski, who raised the imperial flag
over the city, the Japanese troops in the city remaining neutral.
M. Merkudoff was named head of the new Government, but almost
immediately another new Government was formed by Lieutenant
General Boldireff.
A few days later the anti-Bolshevik leaders extended their
authority to the northwestward by obtaining control of the cities
of Spassk and Grodekovo. At the same time anti-Bolshevik troops
under Baron Ungern-Sternberg, in an offensive against Chita, the
seat of the Far Eastern Republic, captured several towns. On
June 4th Omsk, the seat of the former Kolchak Government, was
captured by anti-Bolshevik forces.
At this time, the officers of General Semenoff, the Cossack
general and the most prominent of the anti-Bolshevik leaders in
Eastern Siberia, proclaimed him supreme ruler of the new state
established at Vladivostok. When Semenoff, who had been at
Harbin, attempted to land at Vladivostok, however, he was pre-
vented by the Kappel forces, who, at the same time, placed under
arrest several members of Semenoff's self-styled cabinet. The
foreign Consuls informally voted that until the population had an
opportunity to decide the form of Government it desired, General
Semenoff should not be permitted to land.
Latest dispatches state that the Town Council has been re-
instated at Vladivostok and has resumed its functions. It has
adopted resolutions of congratulation to Semenoff as the stanch-
est anti-Bolshevik leader in the Far East; but has requested him,
as a true patriot, to refrain from interfering in affairs at Vladi-
vostok and also to prevent his Cossack followers, who are esti-
mated to number ten thousand, from doing so. The Japanese
command at Vladivostok, which has been preparing to evacuate
that city and the rest of Siberia, has issued a statement saying it
warned Semenoff that a visit by him to Vladivostok would be un-
desirable and untimely, and that he would receive no support
from the Japanese troops, as such action might give rise to the
belief that the Japanese had instigated the Kappel coup d'etat.
A certain spirit of compromise with capitalistic institutions,
has recently been shown by the leader of Soviet Russia, and espe-
cially by Premier Lenine. Having first obtained complete ap-
proval of his new policies by the Congress of the All-Russia Trade
Unions, on May 24th, Lenine, a few days later, won similar ap-
proval from the Congress of the Communist Party. These reforms
contemplate, principally, a modification of the governmental con-
trol of shops, the encouragement of small and medium-sized co-
operatives and private industries, and collection from the peasants
564 RECENT EVENTS [July,
of a fixed amount of grain by a system of tax in kind, estimated
as about one-third of the crop, the remaining two-thirds to remain
at the disposal of the peasant for trading through the newly
restored cooperatives, whose power is to be extended. The former
system of requisitions permitted the peasant to keep only a small
quantity of grain, the State forcibly taking the rest.
The change in Soviet policy is ascribed to the lack of food
and the exhaustion of the gold supply due to extensive shipments
to outside countries. A recent dispatch from Moscow stated that
since January 1st there have been issued 1,168,000,000,000 rubles
in currency as against 225,000,000,000 issued for the same period
of last year. Eighty-seven per cent, of the new budget is to be
covered by the new issue.
Lenine's sudden drift away from his Bolshevik doctrines and
back toward capitalism, has forced a split between his followers
and those of Trotzky, as indicated by a sharp division of opinion
between the Soviet Peoples' Commission and the All-Russian
Council of National Economy, the two principal political and
economic organizations of the Soviet Government. The former,
controlled by Lenine, is in favor of discarding the Bolshevik pro-
gramme, at least in part and for a time, while the Council, which
is controlled by Trotzky, Schliapnikoff and Bucharin, urges the
annulment of all foreign concessions and adherence to an ex-
tremist programme. This is considered the most serious dis-
agreement that has yet arisen between the Soviet leaders.
Even should the Russian Bolshevik regime collapse imme-
diately, however, a new, united Russia is impossible of realiza-
tion for decades to come in the opinion of political students, Gov-
ernment officials and business men in the three Baltic States,
Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which have diplomatic missions
at Moscow. These men disagree on the number of years neces-
sary to build up a new Russia, some saying it will take one hun-
dred and fifty years and some, making it only fifty. All agree,
however, that the fall of the regime headed by Lenine would be
followed by a long period of anarchy, during which time the in-
numerable ethnographic units that go to make up Russia, would
break away and form separate states.
Soviet Russia and the Turkish Nationalist Government of
Mustapha Kemal have agreed to a treaty based upon mutual aid
for the "emancipation of all peoples of the East, and the absolute
right of self-determination." The protocol, signed by representa-
tives of the two nations on January 20, 1920, which disposed of
territory along their frontiers, has now been made effective. By
this protocol, Batum was given to Georgia and Azerbaijan made
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 565
an autonomous State. The Soviet Government has released Tur-
key from all economic engagements entered into by that country
with Russia during the Tsarist regime.
In pursuance of the Russo-British trade agreement, several
British commissions have left for Russia in order to acquaint
themselves with conditions prevailing at the Russian ports and
the stocks of goods on hand. The main object of the commission
is to overcome transport difficulties. In an endeavor to solve this
problem, the Soviet authorities recently decided, at a conference
with railway delegates, to intrust private concerns with the task
of obtaining fuel for the railroads.
The general elections held throughout Italy
Italy. last month were marked by a comparatively
small vote and disorders in several places,
particularly in the provinces of Pisa, Novara and Parma, where
altogether eight persons were killed and many wounded in con-
flicts between the Fascisti and Socialists. Although Giolitti's own
party returned him only 106 Deputies, he has a Ministerial bloc
of 221. The other political parties will be represented in the next
Chamber of Deputies as follows: the Unified Party, 125; Cath-
olics, 106; Fascisti, 28; Reformists, 22; Communists, 15; Repub-
licans, 9; Slavs, 5, and Germans, 4.
The election of Slav and German Deputies has raised the
question of the language to be used in the Chamber. At present,
when Deputies from the provinces of Nice and Savoy, where
French is spoken, take the floor, they are allowed to speak in
French. It is believed the Germans and Slavs will also attempt
to speak in their own tongue, thus forcing the Chamber to make
rules to deal with the problem.
In the last Chamber the number of Socialists stood 170; in
the new Chamber their number will be 162, counting together
the^ three factions into which the Socialists have split the Uni-
fied Party, the Reformists and the Agrarians. In the old Chamber
there were no Communists, as an organized party, until twenty
of them united after the Socialist Congress at Leghorn and tried
to put Leninism into effect; but there were all along eighteen
Reform Socialists those who believed in the War and who later
placed patriotism above Bolshevism. In the new Chamber the
Socialists are absolutely divided: the Communists have fifteen
seats and the Reformists twenty-two, leaving to the Official, now
Unified, Party 125. The Reformists already have representation
in the Cabinet, and hence will support it; but adhering to a long-
established practice, the Unified Party and the Communists will
566 RECENT EVENTS [July,
continue to be unrepresented. It is obvious that the present Gov-
ernment has nothing to fear from the Socialists as such, as all but
fifteen of them the Communists have solemnly subscribed to
Parliamentary procedure, and normally the Giolitti coalition can
count on the support of the other parties who are represented in
the Cabinet, the total support being 386 with an opposition of 149.
Armed bands, which are declared to consist mostly of former
legionaries of d'Annunzio have terrorized Fiume with clandestine
assassinations ever since the victory of the autonomous party in
the April elections. A number of prominent autonomists have
been murdered, the bands operating chiefly at night, and many
families have left the city because of the terrorism. Professor
Riccardo Zanella, leader of the victorious autonomists, is being
kept out of Fiume. He lives in Buccari, on the Jugo-Slav side of
the bay, where he has formed his Government and is ready to
enter Fiume at the opportune moment.
A general strike was declared in Civitavecchia shortly after a
pitched battle between Fascisti and longshoremen immediately
following the general election. Military forces occupied the city
when the strike was called. At Chiusi, Tuscany, a post-election
clash occurred between Communists and Fascisti, in which five
persons were killed and many wounded. On May 21st, Signer
Platania, leader of the Fascisti at Rimini, was shot and killed at
night by an assassin, who succeeded in escaping.
The Russian Bolshevik trade mission which came to Italy to
negotiate a commercial treaty has given up its intention of drop-
ping its work and returning to Russia. Count Sforza, Italian
Foreign Minister, convinced M. Varowsky, head of the mission,
that his announced reason for going home was unjustified, the
reason being that the diplomatic privileges of the mission had
been violated by the Italian customs authorities. Count Sforza
promised that if M. Varowsky would stay and finish up the treaty,
he would arrange for two months of immunity for the mission.
The treaty, however, must be finished and signed before the end
of July, failing which the immunity is to cease automatically.
Five million lire of forged Italian treasury bonds were un-
earthed in Milan late in May and seized by Government police.
How widespread the counterfeiting is has not been learned. The
pseudo bonds were all dated 1925. The suspicions of the author-
ities had been aroused by the sale of bond coupons in the open
market. The transactions were traced to well known accountants
of Milan, and the counterfeit bonds, from which the coupons had
been clipped, were discovered and sequestered.
June 13, 1920.
With Our Readers.
PEACE is the word heard most frequently on the lips of the
world. Wars are sustained that peace may come: strife,
sacrifice, pain are endured that they may issue in peace. And
while the word is being shouted abroad and blatantly championed,
the hearts of many, if not of most, have given up hope with regard
to peace. They have despaired of knowing the way that leads
to it. They have accepted life, because they are compelled to
a thing to be endured, with its good and ill: its pleasure and its
pain. "Let us not think too seriously of its purpose lest we
be worried and even baffled. Let us close our eyes to what may
be and accept what is: squeeze therefrom as much pleasure and
enjoyment as we can, without being unnecessarily cruel to
others." But faith in oneself, faith in the institutions that have
been traditionally the fortresses of man's peace, has been lost to
the multitude.
Writers in the popular journals and magazines, when they
treat the question seriously, offer but insubstantial speculation
to a people who even yet would welcome bread were it presented.
Movements are "created," varied in inspiration and motive, to
promote "peace." They call for a "union," but furnish no hope
whereby the "union" may live. They discuss the commercial : the
industrial: the racial: but none of this yields even an approach
to peace. They are evidences of what man inevitably yearns for :
they are no guarantees that he will achieve. His repeated wil-
lingness to try and his repeated experiences of failure have made
him the more skeptical: the more hopeless.
* * * *
A PARTIAL peace is not peace at all. There may be no war
** among the nations, yet the hearts of the millions may not
know peace. Racial aspirations may apparently be satisfied, yet
if the people know not justice and salvation they will not know
peace. There is inevitably a social warfare both a possible and
actual contention between group and group: and between man
and man. There is inevitably an individual warfare a struggle
within between the body and the soul, an effort of the spirit to
break through, to conquer, to see the light, to know that the soul,
which measures and explains our life, will attain.
All action springs from the individual, and to the individual
returns. World peace depends upon the contribution of every
568 WITH OUR READERS [July,
nation that affects the world's destiny. Social peace is made up
of the contribution of each and every individual that constitutes
the social body: and the contribution of the individual can be no
greater than the peace which he recognizes within himself. If his
whole view of peace, or its practical attainment, be limited to in-
dustry and trade: agreeable commercial relations the nation's
view, so far as he counts, will rise no higher. If his hope of peace
embraces as essential the moral and the spiritual, so far will he
affect both the peace, the hope and the aspirations of his fellows,
of his country, of the world. If a man believes that he will have
no peace, and that his fellows will have no peace, unless he live
personally in the light of God's definite truth: unless he seek
justice and love charity and refuse to better himself materially
at the slightest cost to his brothers, then his spirit will encourage,
elevate the spirit of his fellows and will be a light, showing the
true road to peace.
* * * *
PR every man knows that there can be no peace unless he him-
self is at peace. And a man cannot be at peace unless he is
at peace with God. Industrial arrangements : international agree-
ments: intellectual speculation: imaginative theories are not the
fundamental, substantial rock upon which man may securely rest
his feet and permit his soul to look up with assurance into
heaven. Every act by which he personally perverts the order of
his soul with God shakes the universe. It may be hidden: un-
known: may seemingly affect no one; but its reverberations are
heard through earth, through all humanity, through hell and
through heaven. Man is not infinite, but each and every man, by
virtue of the power of his free will, has an infinite force, an in-
finite power. The security of the world demands that each shall
keep that power in touch with its Source, else it will play chaos
with the individual and with the universe.
It is the individual's irresponsibility, the thoughtless, reckless
use of his powers, that has made remote today the possibility of
peace. The individual soul does not know peace because he is
unwilling to recognize the law of life, his immediate, personal
responsibility to a personal God and His divine law. And because
millions of individuals do not know it, the nation does not know
it. The aims of the latter, consequently, not only grow less spir-
itual, but are shaped more and more by material, commercial
trade interests. These become primary instead of secondary:
order is perverted and, consequently, there is no peace.
And the jealousies: mistrust: rivalry: conquest that pre-
dominant commercialism demands, make not for order and
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 569
peace, but for unrest. Yes : all these things are necessary. With-
out them there could be no comity of nations. But they are not
the one thing necessary. In themselves they are not all satisfying.
The spirit of man will ever assert its superiority over his body:
or more truly put, his body also will bear testimony to its union
with the soul and testify to dissatisfaction and unrest, unless its
eternal partner have peace also.
* * * *
HpHIS truth is universal and individual. It is universal, because
A it is individual. It is the starting point for every one of us.
And that is why, from time immemorial until this day, the soul
longs for a Saviour Who will give it peace within, personal recon-
ciliation with God, and show the way of truth: of duty: of love.
That is why the world welcomed, and will again welcome, Christ,
the Prince of Peace. But a few believed in Him at first : the few by
their individual fidelity, their comprehensive concept of peace
converted the world. Only by a return, through the individual,
to a positive acceptance of the definite teaching and law of Christ :
of the individual's fidelity to it, come and go what may, is there
a likelihood that the nation and the world will know peace. Christ
is the only source whence shall spring that fountain of life in the
soul of the individual or of the nation.
"He will speak peace unto His people" (Psalm Ixxxiv. 9).
"The Prince of Peace" (Isaias ix. 6).
"There is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord" (Isaias
xliv. 22).
"To direct our feet into the way of peace" (Luke i. 79).
"Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you" (St.
John xiv. 27).
"Therefore let us follow after the things that are of peace;
and keep the things that are of edification one towards another"
(Romans xiv. 19).
"For He (Christ) is our peace" (Ephesians ii. 14).
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
children of God" (St. Matthew v. 9).
AS a protest and a reaction against the materialism and the
skepticism that not long since were so widely honored, the
insistence in the popular addresses at this Commencement season
on spiritual values was most welcome. One deplores, of course,
the lack of definiteness : the eloquent devotion to the insubstantial.
The word itself is lauded, but the Word Incarnate is unknown.
And there is no one to give Him to the nations save the Church,
570 WITH OUR READERS [July,
who has both protected Him and given Him freely since He died
for all on the Cross.
* * * *
MR. COOLIDGE, the Vice-President, in his address at Amherst
College, has reviewed the unrest and dissatisfaction of the
world : "The world must look for something more than prosperity
in the present situation. The individual must look for something
more than wages and profits for his compensation. Unless this
satisfaction can be found by proceeding in the way of right and
truth and justice, the search for it will fail. The material things
of life cannot stand alone. Unless they are sustained by the
spiritual things of life, they are not sustained at all. The work
of the world will not be done unless it is done from a motive of
righteousness."
"There must also be in your lives," stated President John
Grier Hibben of Princeton University, "some constant star in the
heavens above, some divine light upon human affairs, upon which
you can steadfastly fix your gaze and lay your course."
"Only by the rehabilitation of the mind of man and increase
of the areas of intelligence and goodness of man to an extent that
shall eliminate the chance of evil infection, can the opportunities
of life be insured," was the pronouncement made by Dr. Ernest
Martin Hopkins, President of Dartmouth College at the Com-
mencement exercises of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. W. H. P. Faunce of Brown University, in his Baccalaur-
eate sermon, stated that one of the evils of the day was the loss of
faith and liberty and self-control. "This same loss of faith leads
often to the creation of new social machinery and the substitution
of mechanism. It works busily and noisily, as if the Kingdom of
Heaven were not like a grain of mustard seed, but like an adding
machine."
THAT national vigilance on the part of the Catholic body is
necessary for national welfare, is once more made evident
by the history of the recent school controversy in Belgium. This
review is taken from an article, entitled "The School War in Bel-
gium," by C. d'Orgeu, in the June issue of L'Actualite Catholique.
His startling conclusion is: "Not only are the present anti-Cath-
olic and Masonic measures of the present Minister of Instruction,
M. Destree, illegal, but the system now in force in Belgium is
illegal, and this illegality is due more to the negligence of Cath-
olics than to the boldness of their enemies."
* * * *
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 571
THE school system of Belgium is quite simple. Primary edu-
cation is compulsory for a period of eight years. The pro-
gramme of studies is laid down by the State as defined by
Article XVII. of the organic law on Primary Education. But the
law permits that this education be given by different types of
schools. Schools in Belgium are free. There are different kinds
of primary schools: municipal schools: adopted free schools:
adoptable free schools and unadopted free schools. A free school
is one which, by fulfilling certain legal requirements as to quarters
and teachers, is adopted by the municipality and receives certain
material advantages. Adopted schools are those which, although
fulfilling the legal requirements, are not adopted by the munic-
ipality but, nevertheless, are subject to limited government control
in return for subsidies paid from government funds. Non-adopt-
able schools are entirely free and receive no subsidy of any kind.
* * * *
IT is to be noted that the municipalities have no direct authority
over the schools which may be adopted by them. They can-
not modify the legal programme by restriction. They do not have
even the right of supervision which belongs to the State alone.
Article XVII. of the law on Primary Education confines itself to
an enumeration of the branches which must compose the mini-
mum programme. Everything contained therein is, therefore,
necessary and compulsory. With regard to the administration,
the law gives full liberty to the municipalities, which are ex-
tremely jealous of their prerogatives and their autonomy, and to
the directors of the free schools. It is permissible to add special
branches when such a course is considered advisable by the mu-
nicipalities or the directors.
* * * *
IN the country districts of Belgium the municipal school is, as
a rule, Catholic. In the large centres, where there is a dense
laboring population and where Socialism has successfully spread
its anti-religious propaganda, the municipal schools are anti-
clerical. In such schools there is no trace of religious instruction.
Now the remarkable point is that not only anti-clerics, but that
Catholics themselves stated to the author of this article that
religious instruction in the schools was not compulsory. One
experienced man, interviewed by the author, stated that in cities
like Antwerp no religious instruction had been given in the schools
for over fifty years, and that it had even happened that the clergy
had refused to give religious instruction in these schools when
invited to do so after the vote on the school laws in 1879. This
572 WITH OUR READERS [July,
last statement is, the author states, a fact absolutely exact, con-
firmed by leading Catholic churchmen.
The reason why this invitation to give religious instruction in
the municipal schools was refused was that the clergy might
throw their support to the free schools. "The question might be
raised,'* says the author, "as to the opportunism or even the
legitimacy of an abstension fraught with such consequences."
RELIGIOUS instruction in the municipal schools of Belgium
is compulsory in spite of what even a militant Catholic Bel-
gian stated to the author. The question of the teaching of religion
and ethics comes first on the list in Article XVII. of the subjects
required by law in the programme of Primary Education. This
same Article XVII. demands that the first or last half hour of the
morning or afternoon session every day be devoted to instruction
on religion and ethics. Instruction on these subjects is, therefore,
compulsory in all municipal and all adopted schools. This same
Article XVII. states by whom such instruction is to be given. It
is to be given by the ministers of the religious faith which is that
of the majority of the pupils, and may be given either directly by
the minister himself or by a teacher appointed by such a religious
official. But the officials of the religious bodies are always re-
sponsible for these courses. Only on the written request of the
parent of the child, is such child to be excused from religious
instruction. And the law provides guarantees against those who
might exert undue pressure on the head of the family in one direc-
tion or the other.
This instruction is made compulsory by repeated articles in
the text of the law. It is optional only for the adoptable and non-
adoptable schools. The law makes it so compulsory that it is a
subject of inspection by the delegates of the heads of different
religious denominations. The latter are required to send each
year a formal report to the Minister of Arts and Sciences, de-
scribing the manner in which religious and moral instruction has
been given in the schools. As regards the Catholic Church, there
is a head ecclesiastical inspector in each province whose title is
head diocesan inspector, and in each principal inspection district
there is an ecclesiastical inspector with the title of diocesan
inspector. The appointment of these inspectors by the Bishop
of the diocese is reported by the Bishop to the Minister of Arts
and Sciences, who must acknowledge the same. Both classes of
inspectors receive a yearly salary from the State.
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 573
THE query of the author seems, therefore, very pertinent as to
why these inspectors have permitted the existence of munic-
ipal and adopted schools that do not give religious instruction.
"The majority of the Belgian Catholics are good and practical
Catholics," says the writer, "but they are, nevertheless, absolutely
ignorant of the rights and duties implied by their position as
Catholics."
The further misfortune has been that anti-Catholics have
taken advantage of this neglect on the part of Catholics when
the latter had numbers, law, and power on their side. M. Destree,
in charge of public instruction in Belgium, a notorious Free-
mason, has not been satisfied with the progress made in the
schools through the underhand methods of anti-clericalism. He
has issued circulars which call for instruction in civic ethics. The
hidden object is, of course, to combat Christian ethics. This is
cloaked under a claim of training future Belgian citizens in their
patriotic duty. The forces of anti-clericalism and M. Destree
know perfectly well that such a procedure is illegal. They should
enforce the law : they cannot modify it without a new law, a vote
by the Parliament, the expression of the will and power of the
people, but, like all tyrants, they put themselves above the law.
They will not admit they are violating the law; they claim that
they are simply interpreting it.
Already in some municipal and adopted schools this secular,
so-called moral instruction is being given. Even some of the
Catholic cantonal inspectors have been so deceived that they have
accepted assistants, appointed by M. Destree, to help them in
their task of supervising this ethical instruction. Direct intensive
Catholic action is needed. "No one," says the author, "throws
into his face [M. Destree] the brutal fact that what he is doing
and what he wants to do is illegal, and that his dictatorship will
be met with a refusal to obey."
* * * *
MD'ORGEU is not very hopeful in his outlook for successful
. Catholic action, but he does observe "a real reaction among
the women and the young people who appear to have decided
upon a bitter struggle. I believe it will be a good thing. On
this point the sacred union, which lulls us to sleep, will cease.
The Belgian nation is Catholic, submissive to the hands of its
leaders. The raw material is good, but leadership is required to
restore it to a consciousness of its dignity and its duties. Other-
wise grave dangers await Belgian Catholics at a critical point
in the country's history."
574 WITH OUR READERS [July,
THE full text of the pronouncement of the Hierarchy of Ire-
land, meeting at Maynooth, will no doubt be known to our
readers before this issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD reaches them.
We regret that, since that full text has not reached the United
States, we cannot publish it here. However, the cabled passages
tell us that the Hierarchy declared that the' reign of terror and
injustice in Ireland on the part of the English Government con-
tinues to be the scandal of the civilized world. "Until repression
ceases and Ireland's right to choose her own form of government
is recognized, there is no prospect of this country's peace or
reconciliation, which the Pope so ardently desires."
The Irish Hierarchy further declare that the outrages and
horrors previously denounced by them are now intensified. They
lament the fact that even darker outrageous measures are threat-
ened, because the Irish people "rightly spurn the sham settlement
devised by the British Government."
The recent farce of the establishment of the Ulster Parlia-
ment "when the campaign of Catholic extermination is in full
blast" was unequivocally condemned: and gratitude is expressed
for the funds that have been sent "from America's inexhaustible
benevolence."
A COMPETITIVE contest might be opened by some of our Cath-
** olic reading circles, on the subject of references in the
secular papers to Catholic hagiography. For example, to what
saint does the following quotation, taken from the New York
Times, refer: "On this subject his feelings are deep, and while
he will never wear a martyr's crown, he will go to the official
block, if necessary, whistling merrily."
T
HE following words refer to the letter of Mr. Cyrus Adler,
published in the May issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
1. A reviewer of a small pamphlet or books in general, cannot
tarry in refuting or discussing their whole contents. He only points
out faithfully the main statements, or theories of the writer. In the
shortest possible way, I have given an account of the small volume of
Dr. Godrycz's work, entitled Political and Financial Independence of
the Holy See. There, the Jewish question is skimmed over only to
suggest that there is a certain kind of similarity between the planned
Jewish autonomous state of Palestine and the scheme of the inde-
pendence of the Holy See, traced out by the writer. The reviewed
pamphlet is absolutely free of any anti-Semitic dross. It is not the
mood of true Catholic writers to awake ill feelings against the Jewish
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 575
race, and the writer of these lines remembers that he was expelled
from Russia in 1908 for having strongly condemned the Russian anti-
Semitic policy and Russian pogroms in his Italian pamphlet, L'ebraismo
in Russia.
2. To my knowledge all the statements of Dr. Godrycz are true
in this sense, that they have been drawn from authentic sources. The
constitution of the future Keren Hayesod, or Jewish National Home in
Palestine, may be found in all Jewish papers. Not all the claims of
the Zionists were accepted by the Conference of Peace, but, neverthe-
less, the semi-independent state of Palestine was created at the con-
ference of San Remo, and political privileges were granted, and Dr.
Godrycz is free to expound his point of view as regards their value
and opportunity.
4. My critic declares that the problems connected with the Jewish
National Home, and especially the right of a double citizenship, are
out of the realms of possibility. Dr. Godrycz does not talk about pos-
sibilties, but about the privileges granted to the Jewish National Home.
The privilege of double citizenship was granted in a certain religious
sense by the conference at San Remo, though after a few months it
was partly abolished. I do not understand why Mr. Adler denies the
existence of a religious citizenship that binds all the Jews scattered
in the world. Did not he read the last appeal of the executive com-
mittee of Zionism, an appeal that, according to the noble tradition of
Maasser, claims a special tax for the new state of Palestine from the
Jews? Among other things, he said: "We have not in our hands an
executive power of a well established state. We address ourselves to
the Jewish citizens, and our appeal is free of coercion. In this solemn
moment, no Jew worthy of his name and his race is free from the ful-
fillment of his duty and responsibility." Is not such claim of taxes
based on a religious universal citizenship? Needless to say, that the
right of claiming the payment of religious taxes forms a true religious
citizenship.
4. The Vatican is the asylum of the centralized power of the
Catholic Church. If some Jews, as Mr. Adler acknowledges, desire to
have a centralized Jewish religious power in Palestine, why protest
against the epithet, "Jewish Vatican," adopted by Dr. Godrycz? If
Mr. Adler does not like the name, he must, at least, consent that a dif-
ferent name would not change the substance of the thing.
5. As regards the statement of Dr. Godrycz referring to the
great influence of Jewish capitalism in the financial control of the
world, the problem is beyond my province. I leave to Mr. Adler the
responsibility for his denial.
I repeat, from a Catholic point of view, that anti-Semitism is a
great crime. It would be unfair, however, to brand as falsehoods
or anti-Semitic uproars, the free discussion on the religious and po-
litical rights desired by the Jews for Palestine, and to a great extent
granted by the Conference of Peace at San Remo.
AURELIO PALMIERI, D.D., O.S.A.
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P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Henry Edward Manning. By Shane Leslie. $7.50.
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Liliom. By F. Molnar. $1.75.
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The Christian's Ideal. From the French. 65 cents net.
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Trent. By F. J. Kinsman. $1.10 net.
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De Praeceptis. By H. Noldln, S.J. $4.25.
THE CORNHILL Co,. Boston:
The Celestial Circus. By Cornelia McCleary. $1.50.
THE FOUR SEAS Co., Boston:
A Salem Shipmaster and Merchant, Autobiography of George Nichols. Edited by
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Father Tabb. By Jennie M. Tabb. $1.50.
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, New Haven:
The Groping Giant. By W. A. Brown, Jr. $2.50. Life of Marcus Aurelius. By
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JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY, Philadelphia:
Post Biblical Hebrew Literature. Two volumes. Texts and Translation. By
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CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW, Washington, D. C. :
Great Britain, Spain and France versus Portugal. Notes on Sovereignty. By H.
Lansing. Presidential Address at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the American
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GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington:
The Owl Sacred Pack of the Fox Indians. By T. Michelson.
B. HERDER BOOK Co., St. Louis:
Familiar Astronomy. By Rev. M. S. Brennan. $1.50. A Joyful Herald of the
King of Kings. By Rev. F. M. Dreves. $1.25 net.
ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL LIBRARY, Springfield:
Biographical Series. Volume I., Governor Edward Coles. Edited by C. W. Alvord.
MISSIONARY SONS OF THE I. H. OF MARY, San Antonio:
Institutions luris Canonici. Tomus I. By P. Maroto.
HUMPHREY MILFORD, London:
Courage in Politics and Other Essays. By Coventry Patmore. 7 s. 6 d. net.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne:
Recent Developments in Science. By Rev. W. Ryan, S.J. 2 d. Some Catholic
Names in Medical Science. By Rev. C. Ronayne. 2 d. Pamphlets.
PAUL GEUTHNER, Paris:
Pheniciens. Par C. Austran. 30 frs. La Linguistique. Par J. Marouzeau. 7 frs.
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THE
Catholic ^orld
VOL. GXIII.
AUGUST, 1921
No. 677
THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO.
BY T. B. MORONEY, S.S..T.
ATELY the talk about Americanization has been
loud and long. Every racial group within our
borders has been suggested at some time or other
as a fit subject for Americanization every group,
that is, with the exception of the Negro, which
probably needs to be Americanized more than any other.
There are possibilities more deadly than those which our
fancy creates out of the allegiance to other lands that immi-
grants are generally supposed to carry with their baggage.
The problem of adjusting the immigrant is not nearly so diffi-
cult as our highly paid social workers would have us believe.
It is frequently solved by the simple experiment of finding
this country a better place to live in. Environmental influences
undoubtedly help to make more "citizens" than our courts
suspect.
But the case of the Negro is quite different. There is little
hope, as things go at present, of his ever being assimilated by
the natural processes of association. Nominally a citizen, he
is alien mentally and volitionally to our institutions. He has
been isolated by steady and methodical policy. He has been
given to understand that he is not wanted, that the only reason
he is tolerated is that there is no known way of getting rid of
him. Of course, we are not so crude as to write or speak our
COPYRIGHT. 1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATF. OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cxiii. 37
578 THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO [Aug.,
sentiments in such plain language, but the Negro understands
us thoroughly.
There is every ground for thinking that some people will
make the initial mistake of confusing the implications here set
down with a plea for social equality. In that event, the simple
answer is that no white man who knows the Negro would,
from a mere standpoint of expediency, plead social equality
because colored people would be the first to suspect him as a
Greek bringing gifts. Most Negroes, if we can accept their pro-
fessions, do not wish, or at least expect, social equality. The
race has had its agitators, able enough, but lacking prudence,
\Vho hamper rather than assist Negro advancement. But in a
community of Negroes where conditions are normal and op-
portunities favorable, an agitator would hardly have a decent
hearing. As an actual fact there are neighborhoods where
members of the colored race have settled down to the con-
tented level of an autonomously sufficient life. Julian Street
tells of one such in Atlanta. And there are others in the South.
In the matter of the Negro we have not exercised ordinary
common social sense. We have never seriously considered the
black race as being more than quantitatively present in our
society. We have overlooked utterly the qualitative relation
which the Negro must bear to our social whole. Even the
South with its informing economic history has failed to learn
that no group, especially one of the size of the Negro group,
can function as part of a social body without atfecting it for
good or evil. We like to think of the formation of a society
as due solely to the action of volition. The notion flatters us
and, like all flattery, it deadens our appreciation of truth. We
might as well face truth in the realization that the colored man
is able to determine, in part at least, what this nation ulti-
mately becomes. Whether the dose is to be bitter or sweet is
left largely to our own prescribing. The Negro can be used to
advantage or he can be the means of degrading us. Unless the
present ruinous course of indifference on the part of one class,
and viciousness on the part of another class is checked, we
will be degraded.
Racial clashes, pathetic as they are, have their uses. They
reveal us to ourselves in a way that less violent incidents never
could. They make us discontented with the flimsy pall of
paper-made respectability that frequently obscures our view
1921.] THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO 579
of things in the real. They render us sensitive to the "screech-
ing humor" in many of our vaunted achievements. They show
us that we have still many things to learn, and that in itself is
a lesson with which no honest American could very well dis-
pense.
For one thing, we are not nearly so close to that "ethical
type" of association which sociologists assure us is the last
stage of social development, the full fruit of progressive
rational association. True, many politicians, authors, preach-
ers, and journalists pretend to think otherwise, and they soothe
us with pleasingly eloquent drafts of our own worthiness.
But then, there are facts, facts like that riot in Washington or
that riot in Chicago or that orgy in Omaha, that rattle like the
bones of ghosts in those inner recesses of our being that men
identify with conscience. Apparently our national character
is still marked by a good deal of that mob psychology of
which M. Le Bon has written so interestingly. And the Negro
has become a very effective means of keeping it there. When
we have the hardihood to probe even deeper, we find that
racial adjustment is not the only problem in American life
that is being settled on the basis of blind, tempestuous feeling.
The crimes with which Negroes are charged are no doubt
horrible in the extreme. They appear even worse in view of
the general character of shiftlessness-and irresponsibility that
attaches to the Negro, for we get the impression that what one
Negro does, would be repeated by millions of the race, were
the opportunity given. The colored race becomes, therefore,
in our minds a perpetual menace. But assuredly race riots
and lynchings constitute no effective remedy. Most reputable
Southern editors have emphasized this, and Southerners ought
to be the best judges. It is no argument to say that we do not
want the Negroes in our civilization. Historically, it might
have been better for both races had the slave ships never
stopped at our shores. But it is idle to talk "ifs." The colored
race is here to the extent of twelve millions. And it is here to
stay, if the economic necessities of the South have anything to
do with the issue. Whether the Negro becomes a valu-
able element in our commonwealth or what Sir Charles Wald-
stein would term a "social cripple," depends mainly on the
white section of the population. There is a whole lot of piffle
about the freedom that the colored man received. Those who
580 THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO [Aug.,
are now lynching him, made a violent change in his condition
in forcing him to assume a position of responsibility in a de-
veloped society, for which he had no previous training and
towards the proper assumption of which he has been given
very little aid since. They rub their eyes in sanctimonious
horror at the spectacle of a people abusing the blessings of
liberty, when the real miracle would be if that people did not
so abuse them.
The Negro is not free. Every activity of his life shows
that he is not. He is not free intellectually, because he has not
had the opportunities of developing along lines that assure
mental freedoms. He is not free politically, even in places
where he has the vote, or he would not be voting the Repub-
lican ticket with such unthinking accuracy. He is not free
economically, or forty per cent, of Negro families would not
still be living in one-room cabins that are either "the actual
slave home or its lineal descendant." And he is not absolutely
free morally, because in slave days habits were forced on him
that now hamper his will and take their toll in conduct. When
shall we in America realize that liberty is not an absolute
good, but a good only under conditions and restrictions?
It is certain that the Negro will have to work out his own
destiny. Like every other people, the colored race will have
what of culture and civilization it earns. In the case of the
Negro the task will be more difficult, owing to the fact that
he is already in an advanced civilization that clearly has little
sympathy with his efforts. He has to win not only a physical
and mental victory, but a moral victory as well. He has yet
to convince many of his white neighbors that he is even worth
giving a chance. But for this beginning he should at least be
shown fairness. Particular incidents and persons should not
be made the material of universal judgments and condemna-
tions. A priori prejudices should give way before the Negro's
admitted triumphs.
But to obtain the full benefits of self-help the Negro ob-
viously requires assistance along educational lines. The in-
creasing participation of the colored people in their own edu-
cation is hopeful and democratic, but it must be remembered
that the effective education of the Negro people still requires
the liberal financial aid of white people and the active in-
fluence of white teachers. Public school facilities in many
1921.] THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO 581
States are inadequate. This defect has been supplied in some
instances by the foundation of schools under philanthropic
and religious inspiration. The vast proportion of all efforts
in behalf of Negro education is hampered by a lack of funds,
that in many cases prevents even the erection of suitable
buildings and the possession of sufficient school equipment.
But great as is the physical side of the problem of Negro
education, the question of training and instruction is even
more important. Certainly traditional means and methods
are not feasible. In fact, nothing like a standard policy should
be adopted for all communities throughout the South. It is not
likely, on account of psychological and economic differences,
that the same course of study and the same methods of study
as are in vogue among the whites can be applied successfully
to the colored. Instruction for colored pupils should regard
primarily their environment with its needs and opportunities.
Thus, in a section where Negro mortality is high, instruction
in hygiene and home sanitation is far more sensible than a
course of Latin. The first function of a school in such a local-
ity is evidently to help its pupils live. Or again, in a com-
munity where Negroes are generally behind in industrial
efficiency, preparatory courses should clearly suggest manual
training, rather than cultural or professional callings. In a
word, if we insist on keeping the old alignment of studies,
special adaptations will have to be made in order to secure
better trained men and women who will be able to do more
efficiently the work they are called upon to perform in any
community. Culture for culture's sake is all right in its place,
but its place is somewhere after the satisfaction of funda-
mental human and social needs.
The whole problem of colored schools at present is con-
tained in the effort to make the pupil live in working harmony
with the community, with material and spiritual profit to both.
Enterprising teachers constitute, naturally, the chief element
in the problem. But no one type of education, as for example
industrial or literary, will achieve all the required results.
So far as a practical beginning for development is sought,
though, agricultural and mechanical training have many things
to recommend them. The former of these, while more im-
portant to the colored people just now, is the least popular of
all courses, partly because of old associations and partly be-
582 THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO [Aug.,
cause of inefficient schools. There is a strong desire on the
part of Negroes for literary education, and many of their
leaders have shown themselves indifferent both to industrial
and agricultural instruction. Even the so-called land-grant
schools, created by the State for the very purpose of giving the
Negro race an economic foundation, have felt the effects of
this influence. But Negroes are missing much that will benefit
their condition, and that will prepare for the acquisition and
enjoyment of higher things when they heedlessly set aside
opportunities of economic independence. Whites may affect a
certain friendly tolerance for the old type of shiftless, sub-
servient Negro who sang his way through life, but they are
bound to respect the colored man with enough initiative and
industry to own his own little patch of land, his own little
store, or to acquire some useful trade. And in proportion as
the latter class increases, just in that degree will much of the
bitterness of racial relations disappear. By way of illustra-
tion it may be pointed out that there is a certain community
of Negroes in the South, the majority of whom own their
own farms which they cultivate at a profit. They have
well-kept houses, and they are beginning to appreciate some
of the refinements of life. They are respected by neighboring
communities of whites, and their credit is absolutely good at
the bank in the nearby town. Perhaps a further item of inter-
est to Catholics will be the fact that nearly all the members
of this community are Catholics, with church, school, rectory,
and sisters' house, for which they gave the ground and which
they themselves built.
Industrial and agricultural training need not, and should
not, be established in such a way as to set aside the demands
of the colored people for general education. Obviously, as the
material condition of the race improves some of its members
will seek a new outlet for activity in culture or the professions.
Provision will have to be made for these legitimate aspirations.
So far as necessary it should be done now. But by far the
greater portion of effort, for some time, will be better em-
ployed in perfecting the grade schools and in insisting on agri-
cultural and mechanical training, which will give earlier and
more substantial results.
This whole topic of Negro betterment is one that ought
to appeal with peculiar flavor to Catholics, especially in view
1921.] THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO 583
of the recent emphatic affirmations, coming from many high
in ecclesiastical and academic quarters, as to the genuine in-
terest of the Church in social problems. It is doubtful if we
had ever offered to us a more rigorous test of the social power
of the Church than is now afforded in the condition of the
Negro. There are many forms of social service which, though
useful and generally effective, are nevertheless in line with our
tastes. The interest in them is aesthetic as well as religious.
The condition of the colored race proposes a situation in which
there is opportunity for the exercise of the finest type of
Christian charity.
Catholics have, of course, done something to help the
Negro in his search for spiritual and temporal security. The
men and women who have devoted their lives so generously
to the black race have been mainly concerned with the re-
ligious side of the problem, but it is inevitable that a few
things of real social value should have been accomplished.
These results have been more in the nature of by-products
from religious activity. Very little directly and positively
fitting the Negro for life in the secular world could be done.
Lack of finances has been perhaps the chief reason. Other
possible causes have been the necessity of learning by slow
experience the racial peculiarities and possibilities of the
Negro and the absence of authoritative guidance from Catholic
psychologists, sociologists, and economists who have generally
been prevented by the pressure of their other work from in-
cluding the Negro within the scope of their investigations.
Certainly missionaries are not slow to appreciate the light
that comes to them from scientific luminaries, as is evidenced
by the greed with which a few of them have seized upon the
cooperative idea in its application to Negroes.
St. Joseph's Society, with headquarters at Baltimore, is
the most important, in point of time and extent of activity, of
the organizations working for the colored race. This Society is
now struggling with a programme of education intended to
help the Catholic Negroes under its charge to become better
and more useful citizens. It has started work on its parochial
school system. In addition, it dreams of a few centrally located
and thoroughly equipped industrial and agricultural schools
and, more faintly, of a first-class institution for literary and
professional training. At present it possesses as a nucleus
584 THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NEGRO [Aug.,
an industrial school at Clayton, Delaware. The Sisters of the
Blessed Sacrament conduct an excellent training school for
girls at Rock Castle, Virginia. And the late Colonel Morrell
and Mrs. Morrell are responsible for a fine industrial and agri-
cultural school for boys, also at Rock Castle. These three
schools were favorably reported in a bulletin of the United
States Bureau of Education for 1916. In all of these schools
education is provided with a pronounced view to the needs of
the pupils and the community. There are, of course, a number
of smaller industrial and academic schools doing good work
in spite of insufficient facilities. The educational work of the
colored parochial schools was described in the bulletin already
referred to as "effective." A good deal of the credit for this
belongs to Monsignor Burke and the Catholic Negro Mission
Board of New York.
It is not to be expected, of course, that the Negro can
achieve his real position in society without the help of true
religion. Much of Negro leadership would be more enlighten-
ing and satisfying if it could lift its vision above the ideals of
material aggrandizement. Man does not live by bread alone,
and a race cannot progress in any sensible meaning of the
term when the religious aspirations of its members are dis-
torted, or even choked. Sound religious instruction must play
an important part in any vital education of the colored man.
The Negro needs religion for the development of the full sense
of responsibility, for the correction of some defective outlooks
on life, and for the comfort and courage it brings to the indi-
vidual in his struggles. He needs a religion that makes heaven
and earth meet somewhere on the common level of life's duties
and responsibilities, and not simply on the emotional altitudes
of the camp-meeting's "fine frenzy." And he needs religious
guides with deep sympathy and deeper Christ-like faith and
love, who, with surprising sagacity and prudence, will en-
deavor to help him in this world, the while they save his soul
for another.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
BY MAY BATEMAN.
IME, as a factor in the scale of social or artistic
reputations, has upset many balances. The judg-
ment of almost any given epoch is affected by
current events. The "heavy burden of the age"
presses upon the individual critic. National
taste, fluid as individual taste, runs now in this direction, and
now that. A man with an unusual message is listened to with
suspicion. Anyone who sees further than his neighbor will be
thought a knave or fool by nine-tenths of humanity, even if
the remaining tenth hail him as prophet.
Mere caprice, too, apparently, takes a hand in the game;
flinging its contribution at random into the scales, to weigh
them down on this side or the other. Or why should John
Glare's Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, pub-
lished in 1820, run into four editions in twelve months, while
John Keats' Lamia, Isabella and Other Poems, brought out in
the same year by the same publisher, barely achieved a sale
of five hundred copies in the first twenty years? Clare was an
enthralling natural singer, who made the music of the country-
side sound clear in even crowded London rooms, but his art
was not comparable with Keats' art, as the whole world knew
later.
Take another more subtle example of the vagaries of con-
temporary judgment. How was it that Victorian critics with
wit enough to recognize George Eliot's Adam Bede as liter-
ature, should, almost unanimously, have ignored, or else con-
demned, George Meredith's Ordeal of Richard Feverel? They
were published in the same year, 1859. 1 They had qualities in
common; both were sincere and human. Neither author
glossed over tragic incidents which revealed character, nor
minimized the weight of human responsibility. The writing,
in either case, was firm and sure. One was an instant success;
the other, at the time, a complete failure. Richard Feverel
took twenty years to pass into a second edition. Clergymen
1 A. Compton-Ricketts.
586 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
of the Established Church in England banned it, and so did
Mudie's Circulating Library.
Today, Meredith's name is quoted in every book of Eng-
lish literature. Allusion is constantly being made to him in
the current literary reviews. What he said of life and char-
acter, what he foresaw of change and movement in the social
world, what he knew of the growing breach between Ireland
and England through temperamental rather than religious
difficulties, until the flame of the latter was deliberately fanned
for purposes of political ambition applies today in many in-
stances, and might well be quoted on public platforms.
Eight months before his death, in 1909, a French admirer,
a man of high literary attainments, came to visit him at his
little chalet at Box Hill, Surrey. Humanly speaking, Meredith
had begun to come into his own. He had justified the faith
the few always had in him. He had received an ovation on his
seventieth birthday from his fellow-writers; had been made
President of the Incorporated Society of Authors after Lord
Tennyson's death, and been awarded the Order of Merit in
1905. The talk turned on success and unsuccess and what
an author owed to "publicity."
"Critics make my flesh creep," said Meredith. "I never
could pay court to them. . . . Dickens and Thackeray caressed
them as a rider caresses his mount before putting him at a
stone wall. As for Tennyson, he was a past master in the art
of inspiring panegyrics. . . .
"My name is known, but I am not really read. . . .
Strangers look upon me as the great unknown. . . . My poems
were brought out at my own expense. . . . Nobody bought
either my prose or verse. . . . Nowadays, book-collectors buy
up the first editions, which sell at twenty or twenty-five
guineas! Absurd . . . Once, they (the public) tried to stifle
me I was exceedingly poor; I had to work like a nigger
for my daily bread. Later on, a little legacy enabled me
to live my life out in my own way; very simply, as you can see
for yourself in this cottage. If, in spite of general indifference,
I still go on writing it is because a few periodicals, notably
Scribner's Magazine of America, pay me liberally for my
work. . . .
"Sitting here by the fireside, through my closed eyelids,
I can see whole chapters of new novels shape themselves. . . .
1921.] GEORGE MEREDITH 587
Write them? . . . But why? . . . Poems are all that I can
produce now. I am too old. My fellowmen don't encourage
me enough."
"Under his apparent indifference," wrote Monsieur Pho-
tiades, after this meeting, "one could see that Meredith suf-
fered deeply through being misunderstood by his contem-
poraries."
A man's interests and tastes are, as a rule, tinted or tainted
by his surroundings in childhood. Behind us, the background
of our later life, there stretch innumerable lonely tracks of
memory, dating to the earliest times of conscious under-
standing; starry and wonderful, or unimaginably fearful and
dark, about which no one really knows but ourselves and
God. Meredith's childhood, motherless, must have been full
of those amazing entrances on the unknown; each of us may
recall some early unforgettable moment when veils were rent,
and we ran full upon some scene of new emotion. But George
Meredith let little fall, in life, about his early environment and
its effect on his development.
"Accustomed to solitude from childhood, he looked upon
it as a friend," he told Monsieur Photiades, in that last talk
which sent the young Frenchman away all on fire to make his
fellow-countrymen "read, and know this great genius." "I
am never alone, I have my thoughts." 2 Legitimately proud
of his Celtic origin he had both Irish and Welsh blood in
him he admitted that his "little drop of Saxon blood," might
sometimes act as a corrective. His mother, a beautiful and
charming woman of good family, died when he was only five
years old. His parents' marriage had been vehemently op-
posed by his mother's family, as Mr. Augustus Armstrong
Meredith was not his wife's social equal. He made a second
marriage shortly after her death, and then went abroad, to
South Africa. George Meredith, left under the care of his
aunts, Mrs. Burby and Lady Ellis, first attended a day school
at Portsmouth, and then was sent to Neuweid, near Goblenz,
to be educated by the Moravian Brothers. Catholics, Luther-
ans, Calvinists, and Jews lived alongside in this little town.
From early youth, Meredith was trained to hear men of dif-
ferent views, some of them learned men, discuss life and
affairs in general.
a C. Photiades.
588 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
German mentality seemed to him appallingly "weighty."
But he found his knowledge of the language was a useful
asset in after years when acting as war correspondent to the
Morning Post in 1866 during the war between Italy and
Austria. Meredith owed much to his ingrained love of foreign
travel. He always avoided a lamentable mistake common to
many writers and tourists who think that insularity is pa-
triotism, and that we help Great Britain's reputation "by being
very English on the Continent." 3 He was never afraid of
showing up our failings as well as our virtues. "The Eng-
lish defect is really not want of feeling so much as want of
foresight. They will not look ahead. A famine ceasing, a
rebellion crushed, they jog on as before, with their Dobbin
trot and blinker confidence in 'Saxon* energy." 4
Anything less suited to Meredith's temperament than the
career of law, to which he first applied himself on returning
to England after the Neuweid experience, could hardly be
imagined. All the Gelt in him was in revolt at the restraint
and drudgery and monotonous routine of law's early stages.
His love of nature, of open country, of getting so close to the
earth that you could sense her precious mystery, stirred pas-
sionately in him even then. He broke free at the first
chance. Far better poverty and freedom than to keep a
Pegasus stalled and tethered. Youth called, and vision, his
rich imagination, saw new fields. Stories, everywhere! He
must write.
His first poem was published in Chamber's Journal, Edin-
burgh, when he was twenty-one, but the stars still moved in
their appointed course.
Poor as he was, and with his way to make, Meredith had
to undertake what regular and free-lance journalism he could
get. He wrote frequently for, and for a time edited, the
Ipswich Gazette. He contributed articles to different London
papers, as well as representing the Morning Post in 1866 in
the Austro-Italian hostilities. Throughout his whole career
he never altered his views, nor lowered his standard, to please
anyone, no matter how influential he might be. He became
reader and literary adviser to the well-known house of Messrs.
Chapman and Hall, and so "discovered" Thomas Hardy, whose
first manuscript came in Meredith's way. While John Morley
3 Diana of the Crossways. * Ibid.
1921.1 GEORGE MEREDITH 589
was absent on a tour in America, Meredith acted temporarily
as editor of the Fortnightly Review.
The confidence that he had in himself and his work, his
faith that writing was his vocation, upheld him through a pro-
longed period of more than common difficulties and at times
willful misrepresentation. So late as 1887, an article ap-
peared in which he was talked of as if he were a charlatan, or
mad. But in spite of coldness, neglect, gross ahuse, or, ultimately,
enthusiasm, he steadily produced, at intervals varying as a rule
from two to four years, the novels and poems which have
made him famous. Poems appeared in 1851; The Shaving of
Shagpat, 1855; Farina, 1857; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,
1859, and Evan Harrington, 1861, literally passed over the
heads of the British public. George Eliot called Shagpat "a
work of genius ... an apple-tree amongst the trees of the
wood," but Shagpat did not sell. The Times devoted three
critical columns to Richard Feverel, but not until 1879, when
Beauchamp's Career was a success, was the second edition
needed. Modern Love, published in 1861, and scathed by the
Spectator, writes Mr. Gompton-Ricketts, brought Swinburne
upon the field as a fierce champion of George Meredith's
artistic ideals. "His work is always as noble in design as it is
often faultless in result," he wrote. Emilia in England, 1864,
was translated into French under the title of Sandra Belloni,
by which it was afterwards generally known. Rhoda Flem-
ing came out in 1865; Vittoria, 1867; Harry Richmond, 1871;
Beauchamp's Career, 1875; The Egoist, 1879; Tragic Come-
dians, 1880; Poems of Tragic Life (a collection), 1887; A Read-
ing of Earth, 1888; One of Our Conquerors, 1890; Lord Ormont
and His Aminta appeared serially in the Pall Mall Magazine
in 1894, and An Amazing Marriage, Meredith's last novel, in
1896.
"If you touch on my early work, slide very tenderly over
the first poems, sins of youth which drive me to despair,"
Meredith smilingly directed Monsieur Photiades. He dreaded
what Charles Maurras terms "the fatal resurrection" of the
tentative efforts which almost every artist makes before he
ultimately finds unity. He need not have feared. For, how-
ever halting his medium, necessarily less assured in youth
than when he came into the plenitude of his powers, however
contrary to our own, his views of religious dogma, Meredith
590 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
possessed the deep desire faithfully and clearly to express
what he saw as Reality, by means as fine as he could compass.
It was the standard of the writers of the Victorian era Sym-
bolists, Romanticists and Realists alike, a standard which we
fall far short of, as a whole, in modern poetry or fiction.
What then stood for Reality to Meredith? Which star
did he follow? What inspired him to be what so many mod-
ern writers call him, "a tonic influence in life and letters?"
George Meredith was not a "believer" as we use the term.
He has said hard things of "sect" and "dogma." A personal
friend of his told one of his biographers that he "inclined no
more to the Protestant than to the Catholic faith." He has
used both as a target for his sharpest arrows. But he had
many noble principles and preached them consistently, even
when, apparently, there were none to hear. His inborn faith
in spiritual influence and Divinity, his Celtic faculty of recog-
nizing just which material obstacles most cramp and stultify
the soul's growth; and denouncing them fiercely, lends a virile
quality to his work, which may well serve spiritual uses. He
"always devoted his genius, with its infinite resources, to the
dissemination of the same ideas, metaphysical and moral re-
flections which constituted the very core of his being." 5
An avid reader, he was ahead of his contemporaries in his
knowledge of the importance of pre-natal environment and
early post-natal influence. He looks upon the child's care, the
surroundings of the child, as infinitely sacred. 6 In many of
his novels, you would be left, humanly, with a sense of over-
whelming loss, if it were not for the hope that in the new-
born or the coming child, the dead father's or mother's tra-
ditions would be renewed.
Meredith's work is always confident and bracing. He
never wastes time in nebulous conjectures or idle theories that
lead nowhere. Actions have consequences; we must see to it
then that our actions be clean. Purge self of egotism, the
arch-enemy. Sooner or later, the result of our own most
precious secret sin faces us; others, if not ourselves, must pay
for the consequences of our weakness or want of control.
"Like inexorable fates, the laws that rule us compel obedience
and respect."
8 C. Photiades.
6 1 agree with Monsieur Photiades that a celebrated interview with Meredith,
in which his views of marriage were given, must not be taken seriously.
1921.] GEORGE MEREDITH 591
His hatred of sham and falsity; his mockery of existing
fetishes and institutions which were almost solemnly revered,
partially accounted for the distaste with which the general
public viewed his work. His unnecessary digressions, and
delays in opening his story, in certain instances, deterred
them. And he ran counter to the changing popular taste. In
the mid- Victorian epoch, a wave of sentimentalism and weak-
ness threatened to make headway. A few strong spirits waged
war against it; Carlyle, in prose; Browning, in poetry; Mere-
dith, in his novels and verse. Thackeray, and the Brontes had
not hesitated to deal with the dynamic interior forces which
convulse human nature, but they did not go so far as Meredith
went in showing what mixed motives may ravage the natures
of men and women of noble instincts and ideals.
Meredith's characters were made up of conflicting ele-
ments. They never showed as mere specimens to be labeled
in groups with their several tags. They had big moments and
very little ones; they lived and grew, and were human and
haunting. The heroes were not invariably heroic, and the vil-
lains of the piece had their redeeming qualities. In the midst
of his "tangle of glittering cobwebs," even Richmond Roy 7
shows up at times wearing a cloak that might well be of true
golden texture.
At all times, unafraid, Meredith saw men and women val-
liantly fighting, not merely circumstances and environment,
though these formed part of the struggle, but inherited ideas,
habits, traditions all forces which may well break up conven-
tional serenity. He pursued them to their last stand in the
secret chamber, where one by one we ultimately take refuge,
face to face with our secret sin. From that struggle, too many
of us emerge vanquished and whole, instead of conquerors,
though maimed.
So with Lord Fleetwood, 8 worsted by his own pride in the
very hour when self-abasement might have made his lost wife
his again, for "a complete exposure of past meanness is the
deed of present courage certain of its reward within as well as
without, for then we show our fellows that the slough is cast."
One who had learned to feel that "there's not an act of a man's
life lies dead behind him, but it is blessing or cursing him
every step he takes," and that "our deeds are the hard-hitters.
T The Adventures of flfirrij Richmond. 8 The Amazing Marriage.
592 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
We learn, when they begin to flagellate, stroke on stroke," was
worthy of Corinthia in her most generous moment.
If, at times, Meredith does seem unnecessarily to keep his
readers' attention on the leash, his gift of dramatic narrative
in the great emotional moments never falters. His scenes and
descriptions are set out simply, austerely; without an unneces-
sary word or one false movement; the quintessence of art.
There are wounds that cut sharp as the enchanter's
sword, and we don't know we are in halves until some
rough, old intimate claps us upon the back. 9
Take the brief account of Diana (Tony) when having be-
trayed the honor of the man she loved, in the inexplicable aber-
ration which conies at times upon a woman who has loved
too well, and strained her mental faculties too far to keep pace
with even the financial demands life lived at such a pitch
makes on her, she realizes Dacier has left her for ever. Her
friend comes to her:
Emma stepped in. The chill, thick air of the unlighted
London room was cavernous. ... A living woman had
been lying here for more than two days and nights, fasting.
. . . She found the bed, by touch, silently, and distin-
guished a dark heap on the bed; she heard no breathing.
She sat and listened; then she stretched her hand and met
Tony's. It lay open. It was the hand of a drowned woman.
So like to the home of death it seemed, that in a few
minutes the watcher had lost count of time. . . . Tony's
love of a man, as she might have known, would be wrought
of the elements of our being; when other women named
Happiness, she said Life : in division, Death.
The darkness gave sight after a while, like a curtain
lifting a veil : the dead light of the underworld. . . . "Hate-
ful love of men," Emma thought, and was moved to feel
at the wrist for her darling's pulse. . . . The answer was
* at her hand, a thread-like return of her clasp.
Meredith's chosen guide, the Spirit of Comedy, as he
knows it, bears in at least one of its many aspects, a close re-
semblance to the Catholic view of conscience. The Spirit of
Comedy, like conscience, will have no halos adjusted by
9 Diana of the Crossways.
1921.] GEORGE MEREDITH 593
world or self. Meredith describes the mind of a certain elig-
ible "parti" in society's eyes, as "a London house convention-
ally furnished and decorated by the upholsterer, and . . .
empty of inhabitants, even to the ghost. Both human and
spiritual were wanting." 10
Sir Austin Feverel 11 has "experimented on humanity in the
shape of the son he loves as his life." Once "the experiment
appears to have failed," he "can only see all humanity's fail-
ings fall on the shoulders of his son." "Do not shut your
heart," Lady Blandish urges.
He assured her that he hoped not to do so, and the
moment she was gone, he set about shutting it as tightly as
he could. The devil said to him: "Only be quiet: do noth-
ing. . . . Your object now is to keep a brave face to the
world, so that all may know you superior to this human
nature that has deceived you. For it is the shameless
deception, not the marriage that has wounded you."
"Ay," answered the baronet, "the shameless deception,
not the marriage, wicked and ruinous as it must be; a de-
stroyer of my tenderest hopes! . . . Not the marriage: the
shameless deception!" and he crumpled up his son's letter
to him and tossed it into the fire. How [Meredith asks]
are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichseans
when he talks his own thoughts to us?
See Mrs. Doria, Sir Austin's impeccable sister, in the view
of the Spirit of Comedy:
"I sincerely trust that Austin will be able to bear it,"
she said. Doubtless she did trust he would be able to bear
his sorrows to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can
hardly help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophesied
much grief to Sir Austin.
It is impossible, when dealing with Meredith's work as a
writer, to discuss him as poet or as novelist alone. He himself
said: ""My thought is bound up with my prose and poetry, just
as my body is with my mind and soul." Verse, novel, essay
or short story has each its allotted space, and is a definite
tracing in the main design; as definite a design, in its own
way, as any novel with a purpose, even, affords; Kingsley,
10 Diana of the Crossways. u The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
VOL. cxni. 38
594 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
when he laid bare the people's standpoint in his Chartist novel;
Dickens, when he revealed the iniquities of debtors' prisons;
Mrs. Gaskell, when she wrote of strides and their conse-
quences; or Charles Reade, when he painted the asylum system
as it then existed, in black unrelieved. By virtue of his unity,
Meredith's work is art, and lives.
With the main object of truth in view, George Meredith
stripped human nature of its pose and fal-lals, and showed it
stark in the glare of day, to be made game of, or condemned.
Who does not know the story of the friend, who rushed, stam-
mering and stuttering, into Meredith's room when he had fin-
ished reading The Egoist, which had just been published?
"It's awful. It's appalling. Your Willoughby is a portrait of
me!" "Calm yourself," Meredith answered, quietly. "Wil-
loughby is a portrait of us all. . . ."
O self, self, self, are we continually masking in a domino
that reveals your hideous old face when we could be most
positive we had escaped you? "Eternally," the devastating
answer knelled. . . , 12
All these are examples of Meredith's insight into indi-
vidual character. But his psychology was no less true when
he applied it to national traits. When he first wrote, the
tremors of the social revolution, which has since caused so
complete a reversal of the conditions which then obtained,
were beginning, here and there, to be felt. A complete barrier
existed between classes in Great Britain. A few masterminds
amongst the very poor were beginning dimly to see that united
they were power, and might, with time, make the claim of all
to a living wage heard. In the rural districts people thrived
or rotted more or less in accordance with the wills of indi-
vidual landlords; faring well, if the squire and his lady, and
the agent all were humane, faring grossly ill, if they were
not.
In London and the large manufacturing towns, matters
were far worse. Men, women and children herded there often
like brute beasts, in intolerable conditions. The mild Reform
Bill of 1832 was the thin end of the wedge, so far as the people's
ultimate emancipation was concerned. It was in that year
only that the new legal humanitarianism graciously provided
" Diana of the Crossways.
1921.] GEORGE MEREDITH 595
that "sheep-stealing and forgery should be no longer visited
with the death penalty," but not until nine years later that
capital punishment was reserved for murder only.
The Democratic Ideal was beginning to make itself feared
in the political area, and Meredith voiced it in literature, from
time to time, with a clarion prophetic note.
The people are the power to come. Oppressed, unpro-
tected, abandoned; left to the ebb and flow of the tides of
the market, now taken on to work, now cast off to starve,
committed to the shifting laws of demand and supply,
slaves of Capital . . . they are the power, worth the seduc-
tion by another Power not mighty in England now: and
likely in time to set up yet another Power not existing in
England now. 13
"You unimpressionable English [Meredith makes Dr.
Julius Von Karsteg fling in the teeth of Harry Richmond], 14
who won't believe in the existence of aims that don't drop
on the ground before your eyes and squat and stare at you,
you assert that man's labor is completed when the poor are
kept from crying out. . . . The exact stamp of the English
mind is to accept whatever is bequeathed to it, without
inquiry whether there is any change in the matter."
Again, in Beauchamp's Career:
"The rich won't see. They see simply nothing out of their
own circle; and they won't take a thought of the over-
powering contrast between their luxury, and the way of
living, that's half starving, of the poor. They understand
it when fever comes up from back alleys and cottages, and
then they join their efforts to sweep the poor out of the
district. The poor are to get to their work anyhow, after
a long morning's walk over the prescribed space; for we
must have poor, you know. The wife of a parson I can-
vassed yesterday, said to me: 'Who is to work for us if
you do away with the poor, Captain Beauchamp?' "
Grim tragedy beneath the irony here, as in a hundred
other instances in Meredith's work. But "Thought is hard,"
he said, and unlike many of us who write, he never set a word
down without a thought behind it.
13 Beauchamp's Career. " Ibid.
596 GEORGE MEREDITH [Aug.,
With the cheapening of book production, and the growth
of the lending library system, popular taste became more and
more in favor of "novels that came right at the end," just as,
still later, in the Edwardian era, actor-managers waged war
upon all plays which did not "have a happy ending," because
"the public wouldn't stand it." Here again, Meredith held true
to his ideal; virtue, in life, was not always, or even often,
suitably rewarded. Hence, from a material view, the unmiti-
gated tragedy of most of his novels.
What, humanly, can be more "wasted" than Lucy's sacri-
fice, and Richards'? 15 than Beauchamp's steady devotion to
what he saw as duty? 16 In Nevill Beauchamp's case, and Lucy
FevereFs, it led them to death. Lonely deaths, and comfort-
less. Sentimental accounts of deathbed scenes, the reader of
the day might even pass. But there is nothing sentimental in
Meredith's account of Lucy's agony at the last, "even in the ap-
proaches of delirium she was trying to prevent herself from
crying out," for her husband's sake; nor in the bald account of
Nevill Beauchamp's end, drowned saving a sordid straw of
humanity, just as Frank Guiseley, in Monsignor Benson's
None Other Gods, died for what seemed a "useless specimen"
of humanity.
This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp!
It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at
one another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after
they had examined the insignificant bit of mudbank life
remaining in this world in place of him.
So much for the material view. But what of the spiritual?
Meredith answers the question himself, in another book, and
so epitomizes the spirit of his whole teaching:
"There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not
profit by."
Restrained, wise, moral, watchful must that man be who
is deserving of his heritage, in Meredith's philosophy; the
matchless gift of life with its incomparable opportunities. He
sees Earth as the great Mother of Man; Nature is "all-power-
ful, like the image of Fate in Greek drama," as M. Photiades
writes. Meredith loves the sights and smells of Earth with
"Richard Feuerel. "Beauchamp's Career.
1921.] GEORGE MEREDITH 597
"a consuming passion." Returning the body to earth, in death,
is to leave to the world the gift of our example, a legacy of
"what we stood for;" which is immortal, and which bears with
it its own reward.
The Torch Race of ancient days, with a new significance.
The runner in life's race passes his torch on to another runner,
when he himself is so far spent as to drop out. And if the
little torch has been well lit, and truly, it will keep aglow.
No favoritism in the earth's privileges. Her sons and
daughters may share alike the generous fruits, the beauties of
leaf and flower, the song of the lark, always so dear to Mere-
dith. "Of all poets, Meredith is linked with the earth as no
other poet is. ... Rut he does not try to replace God by
nature, to humiliate Christianity by lauding Paganism. . . .
If he sends us back to the earth" to learn, "it is not because
he adores it as a fetish or lends it a mystic personality; his
intention is to remind us from 'whence we came,' to break up
our selfishness ... to sink it in a deep hollow." 17
Writers on English literature often lay legitimate stress on
Meredith's incomparable gifts as a story-teller, as an "un-
rivaled painter of contemporary English manners," or as a
"satiric observer" of unusual penetration, or even as a prophet.
All this is true, but his abiding merit is his virile, unswerving
faith in the gospel of "hope, . . . courage . . . and resigna-
tion."
Dr. Shrapnel, the Socialist and Free Thinker, 18 voices
many of George Meredith's own limitations in his letter to his
disciple. Certain things he says in it are false and terrible,
but some are true. Take the truth first:
"He who has the fountain of prayer in him will not com-
plain of hazards. . . . Prayer is the soul's exercise and
source of strength. . . . Cast forth the soul in prayer. . . .
That crust of habit which is the soul's tomb, and custom,
the soul's tyrant; and Pride, our volcano-peak that sinks
us in a crater . . . you are free of them, you live in the day
and in the future, by this exercise and discipline of the
soul's faith."
Rut again : "Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol;
the resource of superstition."
"C. Photiades. " Beauchamp's Career.
598 PASTEL [Aug.,
A greater than George Meredith (speaking as he does here
in the person of Dr. Shrapnel) said: "Ask, and you shall re-
ceive. . . ."
George Meredith died on the eighteenth of May, 1909. He
was cremated at Woking, and the ashes were interred at Dork-
ing Cemetery next day.
Only by studying a man's craftsmanship very closely, can
we even hope to present his clear portrait, the man as he was
"in the old religious sense 'before God;' the man in his rela-
tion to Reality." That, and only that, is the expression of him-
self more totally his self-expression than the child of his
body even. The foundations a man builds his work upon, the
"inner light" he follows in his art, the means he takes to
"strengthen" or "weaken the state of the world," are the only
marks worth having of a scribe's identity, because they alone
show his soul.
Now and again "the light of glory" did "shine on the eyes
of" Meredith's "mind." In so far as he saw it, clearly, he let
it illuminate his work. Of how many contemporary non-
Christian writers can we say as much?
PASTEL.
(Evening.)
BY CHARLES J. QUIRK, S.J.
PALE rose and gold,
One taper star atween;
Day's story thus is told
The burial of a queen.
REUNION AND FUSION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS.
BY ELISABETH CHRISTITCH.
ELDOM has there been such a complete national
resurrection as that of the Southern Slavs.
Having freed themselves alike from Turkish and
Christian masters, they now stand together, bent
on forming a united independent State to safe-
guard and develop their racial and cultural characteristics.
The riches of their soil, the vigor of their physique, their great
natural intelligence insure a rapid onward march to the Yugo-
Slava ("Yug" South) ; but to expect at this period complete
harmony of action and identity of thought between those who
meet after centuries of separation, would be to ignore the his-
tory of the world and the psychology of the human heart.
One must not forget that the new State is not a homo-
geneous entity. It is rather a family composed of three
brothers who have passed through different trials and expe-
riences that modify their mental outlook. Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes have each distinctive qualities which should com-
plete the others, and the creed antagonism fostered by the
"Divide et Impera" policy of Austria has no longer a reason
for existence. It stands to reason that what suits Macedonia,
but lately wrested by Serbia from the Turks, cannot apply to
Styria in Slovenia, long accustomed to Western culture.
Therefore, the chief preoccupation of the representative
leaders is to decide between a strongly centralized form of
government, which would soon weld all sections of the State
together, or a federalistic form with the local autonomy that
should guarantee to each section its traditional customs. It is
generally said that the Serbs lean to centralization, while the
Croats and Slovenes prefer federalism; but there are notable
exceptions on both sides. In order to understand the different
points of view we cannot do better than listen to the exponents
themselves.
The Serbian official journal, Samouprava, had the fol-
lowing leader in its Christmas issue:
"The Birthday of the God-Man, our Saviour, has a special
600 REUNION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS [Aug.,
significance for us this year. We can sing with full hearts:
'Glory to God in the Highest!' And we remember that He Who
died for love did so not only for His friends, but for His foes.
Serbia, the Orthodox portion of our triple kingdom, celebrates
its Christmas feast on this occasion with special joy, for it is
no longer isolated from its kin of Croatia and Slovenia. This
memorable date should be truly for us the most important in
all history. It is undeniable that the heavenly ideal preached
by the God-Man nineteen centuries ago has slowly, but surely,
progressed, however far it seems yet from realization. As the
centuries go by mankind sees and feels ever more clearly the
great import of Gospel Truth. In the hour of triumph the
Serbian nation has special reason to fix its mind on the lessons
taught by the Saviour. Through all its struggles and ordeals
it never lost sight of the final aims, which were peace and
love. It fought against tyranny, plunder, oppression, and as
it compassed the defeat of these evils, it feels it is not abso-
lutely an unworthy follower of Him Who denounced them.
"May the Serbians not be allowed to recall that they
indeed bore the lion's share of the sacrifices entailed by a long
struggle? There are certain differences just now between the
sections of our people between brother and brother. Some
of the Croats and Slovenes, owing to long severance from us,
and subjection to an alien regime which persistently vilified
us, imagine that danger threatens them from Serbia. They
distrust us, they credit us with domineering instincts. On this
Feast of Christmas let us better put aside whatever tends to
disturb the spirit of fraternity. Let our Croat and Slovene
brethren kindle rather in their hearts the trust and affection
we are ready to reciprocate. Let us all strive to follow the
message of today. Let us seek the reign of peace by culti-
vating good will."
Stoyan Protic, a leading Serbian statesman, the lifelong
friend and political adherent of the famous Premier (who
created modern Serbia), Nikola Pashitsh, himself also a dis-
tinguished legislator, said recently in his blunt fashion: "We
must take account of people's feelings even when we do not
share them. Some people are oxen-headed if you will
pardon me the expression and their masters, like Martin
Luther, condone slavery and teach that you must keep heavy
burdens on them or they will become impudent. This method
1921.] MUNIOtt OF THE SOUTFIERN SLAVS 60i
does not commend itself to any of us Southern Slavs, and who
tries it will fare badly."
A serious cause of dissession was the administration of the
oath to elected members of the Constituent Assembly before
the latter had decreed the form of government for the new
State. The Minister of Justice, Dr. Marko Trifkovitch, replied
as follows to the objectors: "Some political groups appear to
act as if our State begins to exist only now. But we cannot
agree to that. The oath is intended to convey the continuity
between Serbia, which made such huge sacrifices for the deliv-
erance and union of our race, and the enlarged State that now
succeeds in its place. We cannot pass over the Agreement of
Corfu, signed by us all when the Serbians were in exile, but
confident of the future. It was a contract built on the King-
dom of Serbia. An amazing assumption is that our State is
only now to be born, when it is internationally already recog-
nized! (The orator tactfully avoids insisting on the fact that
this recognition by the Allies is due to Serbia alone.)
"Again, there is an attempt to hamper the work of this
Assembly by demanding that a majority should mean at least
two-thirds of its members. But this is favorizing the minor-
ities, and surely it is in the interests of all that the Constitu-
tion be voted as soon as possible, to be amended and improved
later on, for nothing on this earth is perfect. We are told that
we should make concessions. I think I may say without boast-
ing that we have indeed made concessions. When our first
combined Government was formed, our Croat brothers kept
all their officials, the Ban (Viceroy) at the head just as here-
tofore; our Slovene brothers, likewise, regulated things as they
wished. The Serbian Cabinet at once gave place to a Yugo-
slav Cabinet. Because they particularly wished it, the Croats
had two Catholics, one a clergyman, appointed to the Minis-
tries of Public Worship and Education. We are warned that
we must be tolerant ! As if we could be otherwise ! When our
peasants rose to fight for freedom, the first word in their device
was, Tor our Christian Orthodox Faith!' and in the second
place came, 'For Golden Freedom!' The Minister who has led
our Foreign Affairs for the last two years is also a Catholic,
Dr. Trumbic. What can one have more? The Government
has been also accused of imposing a protocol on the Assembly.
But it has now submitted this protocol to the vote, and it has
602 REUNION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS [Aug.,
been accepted. Without further recrimination, let us now get
to work."
To get the views of the Opposition, one must follow the
pronouncements of the leaders of the Croats and Slovenes as
voiced by the Southern-Slav Club, which includes eminent
thinkers, as well as proven patriots. At the outset it is un-
fortunately hampered by divisions among those it represents.
According to its organ, the Narodna Politika, the demagogue,
Radic, who persuaded his fellow-peasants that they could com-
pound a little Republican State of their very own, without
regard to those around them, is responsible for the weak posi-
tion of the Croato-Slovene Party in the Constituent Assembly.
Radic's policy of abstention, if persevered in, will further
leave the best elements in Croatia and Slovenia powerless to
counteract the influence of godless factors, here as elsewhere
profiting by every occasion to push their doctrines. Radic,
however short-sighted in politics, is not an irreligious man.
If he were he could not possess, as he does, the confidence of
such splendid Catholics as the Croat peasants. Should reason
prevail over personal ambition and hinder the futile pursuit
of a phantasm, the adherence of Radic and his followers to the
wise policy of the reverend leaders of the National Club:
Ritig, Baric, and Korosec (Chief of the Slovene "People's
Party") , will bring about a more favorable attitude of the Con-
stituent Assembly in Belgrade toward Croato-Slovene de-
mands. The Croats and Slovenes do not wish to obstruct, but
to check the impending course of legislation. Too speedy
crystallization, they find, may not be worth the sacrifices it
must entail. The talented orator, Dr. Simrak, spoke as fol-
lows on behalf of the Southern-Slav Club :
"We are not separatists, but we are opposed to Serbian
hegemony. Centralization is no more desired by Serbian cul-
tivators and workers than by ours, but by a few capitalists and
imperialists, the same on our side of the rivers who served
the policy of Austrian and Magyar. There is nothing that
divides the mass of our people. We Croats and Slovenes must
protest against the insinuation that we are inferior in our sense
of the value of freedom. In a thousand-year struggle we pre-
served our nationality. In the time of Napoleon we attempted
to found a Southern Slav State under the name of Illyria. Our
great Bishop, Strossmayer, first proclaimed the unity of the
1921.] REUNION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS 603
Southern Slavs. In the struggle to resist the Magyarization of
the Ban, Khuen, we were not helped by the Serbs living in our
midst. In our last terrible struggle, the men who stand for
centralization today were opportunists and willing servants of
the Austro-Hungarian regime. . . . We ask for a measure of
autonomy that will take into account not only political and
economical, but historical factors. . . . With regard to re-
ligious liberty we do not understand it in such action as that
of a Serbian Bishop now endeavoring in the Republic of the
Central Slavs, Czecho-Slovakia, to win over the Uniat Cath-
olics to Orthodoxy. It would be a sad mistake if anything of
the kind were attempted here at home."
Dr. Lazar Markovic, in reply, said that no proof could be
brought of the assertion that the plan for centralization
favored one branch of the nation more than another. As in
every democratic, parliamentary land, questions would be de-
cided by a majority, and it was open to all sections of opinion
to combine and work to obtain a majority. Only purely local
matters could be well regulated by provincial councils. In all
that seriously affected the State, the control of a central organ-
ization was necessary.
It will easily be inferred that the opinions of Croats and
Serbs are different when it is question of what are the most
serious interests of the State. Take, for example, religious in-
struction in the schools. Serbia's nationalism has first place
in education, or rather her religion is so inextricably woven
with her national sense that it cannot stand apart. The teach-
ing of Christian doctrine is obligatory only in the primary
schools, and this ruling would be intolerable to the Croats. It
will be said that they are assured of fair play in the legislative
assembly, but we have seen how, owing to the culpable pas-
sivity of the Badic Party absorbed in its visionary ideals, the
Croats are numerically too weak to impress their principles
on a centralized form of government. Future developments
may alter their position, and their natural allies should surely
be the clergy of the Orthodox Church, equally exposed to the
attacks of aggressive secularists. But the Orthodox Church is
so identified with the State that she cannot freely defend her
sacred inheritance.
She could reap untold good from united action with the
Croats, whose clergy exert a real influence on the intellectual
604 REUNION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS [Aug.,
culture of their countrymen. While Gnostics and Communists
are battering at every outpost of the citadel of Christ, it is a
pity that concerted action is not undertaken by both Chris-
tian bodies. The Orthodox Church has hitherto withstood any
attempt to introduce civil marriage, and it has lately shown
firmness in dealing with matters of internal discipline, but
anti-religious forces are rife in all parts of Yugo-Slavia, even in
Slovenia, the stronghold of Catholicism, so that centraliza-
tion, in itself a kind of absolutism, appears a real danger to
the Catholics.
For example, an eminently fair-minded Serbian Minister
of Education recently decreed the Sokol Gymnastic Society
as standard for all schools. Now this Society, introduced from
Czecho-Slovakia, is anti-Catholic, and another Society, the
"Orlovi," confessional, as well as athletic, has been started in
Croatia. As soon as the Minister, Dr. Paul Marinkovic, was
made aware of the circumstances, he canceled the first decree.
But will such rectifications be obtainable under a centralized
government? Catholic claims may get a fair hearing, but
would certainly not be the first consideration. Prejudice has
to be met as well as ignorance. It was a renegade Croat who
doubted the genuineness of the "Clericals' " oath to the Con-
stitution because of the mental reservation taught by the "no-
torious Alfonsus Liguori."
The Croats point out that France itself is returning to a
policy of decentralization, having realized that local autonomy
is the best means of administering a democratic State. With
regard to the project of a two-house system of legislation, the
Croats are in unison with the best leaders of Serbian thought,
whose most distinguished exponent is the successful diplomat
and perspicacious statesman, Dr. Milenko Vesnic, signatory of
Serbia's generous Concordat. Another prominent politician,
Dr. Voya Marinkovic, reminds the Croats that from a miser-
able scrap of autonomy wrung from Ali Pasha, Turkish Vizier,
in the last century, not only a free Serbia, but the present
stately kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were evolved;
therefore, as long as the unity of the State remains uppermost
in the minds of all, no limit need be set to the requirements of
true liberty.
It is but fair to state that within Serbia itself, at the pres-
ent moment, the most perfect tolerance is shown to the Croats
1921.] REUNION OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS 605
who, owing to the natural commingling of the race so long
held apart by Austria-Hungary, are dispersed all over the
country either on various business avocations, serving in the
army, or otherwise. A Serbian officer writes : "It is illuminat-
ing, if not gratifying, to find our Groat recruits so astonished
at the treatment they receive. I fear they had been told by the
priests of their villages that, as Catholics, they were going to
have a hard time. When will the harm be wiped out that
Austria has done to Church and nation? . . . We have now
three clergymen, all military in this station, a Catholic, a
Mohammedan and an Orthodox. The Catholic is a Slovene,
a good and nice man, popular, and content with everything.
We had to fix up chapels for him in three different towns
where he has discovered Catholic residents. He asked if the
few Catholic civilians and women here may assist at Mass in
the barracks? The Orthodox priest objected, and requested
us not to permit this, for the barracks would become a centre
of propaganda for Catholicism, but I, nevertheless, gave him
every latitude in this respect, and my General approved. I
hope this is tolerance? . . . The Mohammedan is great fun.
He did not want a chapel or anything of that sort, only an
empty room and a few mats; so his desires were easily satis-
fied. There are but a dozen Moslems in the entire division.
(Really, the number of our people who fell away from Chris-
tianity during all those centuries of oppression is very small.)
The poor man's chief concern, as he explained to me, is that
most of his flock ate in common with the Christians, eating
pork and other unclean stuff. He asked me to intervene and
forbid it. I told him they could cook apart if they wished
some of them do and we would provide special food, but if
they preferred roast pig we could not, and would not, prevent
them. His 'bete-noir' is our military apothecary who, when-
ever he has the chance, tells the Moslems he, too, was once a
believer in the Prophet, but is now convinced he was a fool.
He got himself baptized, and advises them to do the same.
In general, there is no trace here of religious feud, nor do I
believe throughout the country."
It is, nevertheless, true that the Croats and Slovenes are,
at the very outset, handicapped by untoward circumstances
legacy of the past. In their new capital, Belgrade, they are
without a suitable place of worship. The tiny chapel, which
606 THE MOUNTAIN [Aug.,
even formerly did not suffice, cannot now hold one-fifth of the
congregation. A brave effort is being made to collect in the
deplenished provinces lately exploited by Austria, sufficient
funds for a worthy Catholic edifice, and the Holy Father has
been a generous contributor. But Croatia and Slovenia
suffering from the penury which afflicts Austria (in a lesser
degree) and Serbia, even if she were concerned in the erection
of Catholic Churches hardly to be expected is overwhelmed
by multitudinous needs. A Society has been formed, under
the patronage of Monsignor Bauer, Archbishop of Croatia, to
gather funds also in foreign lands, wherever possible, for this
most worthy object of insuring Catholic worship in dignified
surroundings within the capital of what is now the foremost
Catholic State in Southeast Europe.
THE MOUNTAIN.
BY CHARLES L. o'DONNELL, C.S.C.
WE are bound in with vague fold upon fold
Of mists that wrap our world. We have no skies.
You can not measure here, as the bird flies,
There is no outlet where the fog has rolled
Its grayness over us, till, as day grows old,
Stirrings of wind wake hope, before light dies,
Of the low gray lifting; then, enraptured eyes,
A mountain peak stands forth in the late sun's gold.
Beyond the mists that rob life of its vision
Shadows men reckon as reality
Where sense goes groping along troubled ways,
There are those fields that dreamers named Elysian,
Eternity, saints charted like a sea,
And God, when time is done, the Ancient of Days.
MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK.
BY CHARLES C. CONATY.
UST before our division left camp to go overseas,
I dropped in one day to see my good friend, Mr.
R , the proprietor of a shoe store in a city of
the "Sunny South." I delighted in calling his at-
tention to the fact that the sun gave plenty of light,
but no heat. This day he gave me a little note-book, bound in
black leather and bearing on its cover the trade-mark of a
shoe firm, a bent arm with a sword grasped in the hand. The
device proved very appropriate. The book itself was small,
not over three inches long and two wide, and contained about
fifty pages. I accepted it with thanks, and put it in an upper
pocket of my tunic.
During the months which followed, I used it as a note-
book, jotting down names of men and places which I wished to
record. In it I also kept a record of the soldiers whom I
buried. It is not in any sense a diary. These little stories
which follow are the incidents brought to my mind by the
various entries in this little note-book. They may be of inter-
est as showing the relations of a "doughboy-priest" to his
boys, whom he loved, and always will love. The memory of
those lads will ever be sweet. For I learned from them to love
God and my fellowman as I never could have otherwise.
ROSE PETALS.
All the way over the hill I was revolving in my mind the
possibility of finding some sort of transportation. This "jour-
neyman-priest" way of tramping from one town to another
was becoming tiresome. Moreover, it took too much time. All
my efforts to get a horse or any kind of motor transport had
been unsuccessful. Here, on the crest of the hill, a sort of
plateau, was an English aviation field the home of a bombing
squadron. That is, it had been their home till German pur-
suit planes had located it and German bombing planes made
it unsafe. So the squadron had flown away to another home,
608 Ml 7 LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
and with it had gone my only hope. For the Commandant,
a genial Canadian, had placed his auto at my disposal only
the day before the squadron moved. I had met him after
saying Mass one morning for the Catholics among his men and
the American detachment of ground men serving with him.
As I lunched that noon with the Cure (his name is on the
page before me) of the village where I was scheduled to hear
confessions that afternoon and evening, this problem of trans-
portation was uppermost in my mind. This priest had been
but recently released from service, after four years spent in
hospital work. We managed to make each other understand
and became good friends during the few visits I made him.
He had two hobbies photography and salads. At the first
he was very much of an amateur (judging by the print he
sent me), but at making salads he was indeed a master, an
artist. When I explained to him my difficulties regarding
transport, he suggested that I call on the Mayor of the village
who, perhaps, might be able to lend me his bicycle. So, after
lunch, we called upon his honor, the Mayor. At his house,
directly across from the church, we were told he was in the
brewery in the rear.
"But you didn't tell me," I said to the Cure as we walked
through the buildings looking for our man, "that the Mayor
is the brewer !"
"What difference does that make?" he asked me.
The combination struck me as so funny that it took a few
moments to explain in my halting French why the fact of the
brewer being Mayor should cause any surprise.
"In America," I told him, "we camouflage a little more."
We found the Mayor at last, and, with much deference to
his dignity (not very apparent now that he was engaged in
making the brew which made the Mayor go), I inquired if his
honor knew where I might hire a bicycle, or if by any chance
he knew of anyone who might be able to lend me one for a
few days. After much maneuvering, he suddenly thought of
his own, which was soon placed at my disposal, and with many
thanks we left him to the making of his beer. From what I
heard about that beer, he was a better Mayor than he was a
brewer. That bicycle was a veritable white elephant. It had
to be carried up every hill and then required pushing down.
In the end we moved so suddenly that I had no time to return
1921.] MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK 609
it. I left orders for it to be returned to his honor, but even
if he did not get it he made enough out of us, directly or in-
directly, to repay him.
Back again in the Cure's house, our cigarettes lighted (he
liked the English cigarettes), it was his turn to ask a favor.
He prefaced the asking with such a profusion of apologies
that I thought he was going to ask for a million dollars, or
something nt least as impossible for me to grant. But when
he explained what he wanted I breathed easy again.
On the following Sunday the feast of Corpus Christi was
to be celebrated. This celebration would take the form (as in
all Catholic countries) of an out-door procession, in which the
Blessed Sacrament would be carried through the village and
Benediction given at certain shrines. Did I think that the
Colonel would allow the American band to take part in the
procession? And would I dare to ask him for so great a favor?
Knowing the Colonel, I assured my good friend that I dared
ask him, and felt pretty sure that the request would be granted.
The bandmen, I knew, would be delighted. When the partic-
ipation of the band was assured, the Cure asked me if I would
not take part in the procession, carrying the monstrance with
the Blessed Sacrament. This I consented to do, arranging, in
addition, for a guard of honor, to be made up of my own boys.
On Sunday afternoon, that little village witnessed a scene
such as it had never seen before and, in all likelihood, will
never see again. The word had been spread about that the
American soldiers would take part in the procession, and
many came in from the surrounding countryside to see this
unusual celebration. It was hard for them to overcome their
belief that there were no Catholics in America.
The little church was filled with those who were to march,
and outside was gathered a crowd waiting for the band to play.
The church bells started to ring as the procession left the
church, led by the Cure. Behind him marched his people, old
ladies who could scarcely totter along, old men (the young
were all at war), then the little children, followed by the choir.
Then came our band, doing its best with its limited repertoire
of religious music (as I recall it, "Onward Christian Soldiers"
and the "Adeste Fidelis" were the only pieces they played all
afternoon), and, lastly, the Blessed Sacrament carried by an
American priest, under a canopy borne by American soldiers,
VOL. cxm. 39
610 MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
alongside of which marched a guard of honor of American
soldiers with their rifles.
That day will live long in that little village. The proces-
sion wended its way through the streets of the town to the first
shrine, a little stone chapel in a field. Here Benediction was
given and the procession started on to the second shrine, then
to the third, and at last back to the church.
But there is one man to whom that celebration was far
from a success. And I can picture him, as his neighbors talk
about that day, shaking his head and disagreeing with them,
advancing many arguments to prove that it would have been
better had the Americans not been invited to take part. A
band indeed? And what business had a band in such a pro-
cession? Was not the choir able to furnish music, religious
music and hymns, as it had done these many years? And I
can understand his viewpoint, for he was the choir. As usual,
he started to sing as the procession left the church, but the
band soon drowned him out, and he gave up his attempt in
despair. From that time till the end of the march he did not
get a show. Every time he started a hymn, the band leader
waved his baton and the noise of the band sqon drowned out
his voice. I dare say his cronies chided him for many a day
over his defeat on that occasion. But what would you? Could
one man, and he far from the days of youth, compete with
such an opposition? For him it was, indeed, a sad day.
There is yet another incident of that procession which still
further enhances its memory. At the first shrine, when the
"O Salutaris" and "Tantum Ergo" had been sung, and the
Blessed Sacrament incensed, I turned to give Benediction. As
I raised the monstrance to make the sign of the cross over the
heads of the crowd which knelt reverently before me, a perfect
shower of rose petals fell on the monstrance and struck me in
the face. The shock gave me a scare till I saw that there were
two little girls standing in front of me, and that it was they
who had thrown the flowers.
With us the little ones strew flowers before the priest who
carries the Blessed Sacrament in a procession. This was a
new custom in my experience. But I have thought of it often,
and to me there is something inexpressibly sweet in the cere-
mony. It seems as if these little ones, whom He loved above
all, recognizing Him because of their innocence and purity
1921.] MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK 611
where others less clean fail to see Him, would throw their
flowers, not under the feet of the priest who carries Him, but
directly at Him. A shower of love from pure hearts red rose
petals from innocent hands.
A HERO.
"Have a cup of coifee, Father."
"Where did that come from?" I asked in surprise at seeing
a couple of large thermos cans filled with coffee, some bread
and other eatables, in the dugout which I had just entered.
Here the medical corps had established its first aid station,
and during a lull in their work had received this hot coffee
from the rear, knowing that it would do the wounded more
good than anything else.
As I sat there on the ground munching a piece of bread
and sipping^some coffee, I told the boys what little news there
was. Especially of the rumor which had come to headquarters
that there were several wounded down in a cemetery near the
river, who had lain there three or four days.
"Just as soon as it gets dark I'm going down and find out
about it," I told them, "anyone want to come?"
They all wanted to come, but finally I picked the Sergeant
to accompany me; the others would have enough work right
there in the dressing station. So as dusk was coming on we
got a runner to guide us down through the woods to the P. C.
(post of command) of the advance company. He (the runner)
led the way, then came the Sergeant well supplied with first-
aid packets and dressings; and I stumbled along in the rear.
"Say, Father," the Sergeant yelled back over his shoulder,
"I'd like to go to confession."
I laughed. "All right. Let the runner get a little ahead
and you can tell me your story as we go along." And as we
stumbled along the narrow path he made his confession to me
over his shoulder, with frequent interruptions to duck under
branches of trees, or to jump over those felled by the shells.
How varied and how strange were the places and manners in
which I administered the sacraments during those months of
warfare !
We stopped where the woods ended, a wheat field be-
fore us.
612 MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
"What's the matter?" I asked our guide.
"It isn't quite dark enough yet," he replied. "They've got
this field covered so it isn't a healthy place at all."
"How have you been getting across it?" I asked. I knew
that he had carried many messages from his Captain to the
Major in the past two days.
He laughed as he told me how he had crawled across that
field. But he still had a wholesome fear of it. Nothing I en-
countered in the War excelled the wonderful work done by
those boys who acted as runners. It was on them principally
that communication between parts of the line, as well as be-
tween the line and headquarters in the rear, depended. It was
grueling work and dangerous a runner knew his chance of
escaping death or wounds was very slight. So he waited till
he deemed it dark enough to cross without the necessity of
crawling. We followed a track made through the standing
wheat by our men as they crawled across that field when they
had relieved the men on the line two days before. It was
pitted with shell holes now, and here and there a form could
be distinguished in the wheat. The Reaper had been at work.
At the edge of the field, the road, plowed up now by shells,
was blocked by the fallen trunks of once proud poplars. Fol-
lowing this road a few hundred yards, we again cut across
country, and reached, finally, though it took our guide a few
minutes to locate it in the intense darkness, the entrance to the
dugout which was the P. G. of the advance company. It was
directly under an immense shell hole, but fortunately our
engineers had built it deep and well, and it had not suffered.
Stumbling down the narrow stairs, we found ourselves in
a large dugout. On the bunks along the wall lay some
wounded, waiting for their turn to be carried back, cheerful
and brave in spite of pain and hunger. Here the Captain, a
brave man if ever there was one, told me the story. There had
remained with him, after he had effected the relief of the line,
a boy from the regiment which had been relieved. This little
fellow had acted as a guide, and had been of wonderful help,
not only to the Captain, but to all our men. For he alone
knew the location of a spring, which was the only source of
water supply. He seemed to bear a charmed life, going
through barrage after barrage unscathed, guiding our boys to
the spring, procuring water for the wounded.
1921.] MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK 613
Besides all this, he had found some wounded men from
his own regiment, and had brought them into little shelters dug
among the tombs in the cemetery outside the town. For three
days now he had been caring for them, undaunted by the ter-
rific fire of the enemy. Thus far it had been impossible to
carry them back, but tonight we would make the attempt.
Leaving the dugout about nine o'clock, we gathered a few
of the boys who were in dugouts nearby, and started for the
cemetery. We were ten or eleven all told, led by this little lad
from a Maine farm who had proved himself a hero. The
darkness was intense, and the occasional burst of a shell or the
light from a flare but accentuated it. Our progress was slow,
encumbered as we were with stretchers and rifles, walking
single file, each trying to hold on to the man in front.
It was misting heavily so the wet earth clung to our
shoes, still further impeding our progress. But at length we
reached the main road along which the cemetery lay, and
worked our way along the ruins of the wall till we came to the
gateway. Here we crouched behind the wall while our guide
prowled about to get his bearings. How he ever found his way
among the ruins of that cemetery is more than I can tell.
Heavy shelling had broken down trees, toppled over head-
stones, broken into tombs, scattering the bones and dust of
many long dead. Not even they were allowed !o sleep in peace.
But somehow or other, he led us through that profaned resting
place of the departed, locating one after another the little dug-
outs in which lay the wounded.
After getting water for ourselves, as well as for the
wounded, we began the task of getting the wounded out of
their holes. It was a heart-rending task; weakened by loss of
blood and lack of food and care, they cried piteously as we
began to move them. And then to carry them, one by one, out
to the road was a fearful ordeal. Trees blocked our path; we
stumbled into shell-holes and fell over headstones, and each
impact meant agony to the wounded man we carried.
Nor were we spared the horror of shell fire. Often
during our night's work we had to seek shelter for the wounded
and ourselves from the rain of shells which poured in on that
once sacred spot. Some there were who had not lived to be
carried back; these we buried, by caving in the roof of their
dugouts, after we had taken one identification disk from the
614 MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
cord around their necks. They were beyond the reach of shell
and bullet.
It took us several hours to accomplish this part of our
task, but finally we had all the wounded who still lived out to
the edge of the cemetery, near the road. By this time we were
fairly exhausted, but our work had to be finished, so, two men
carrying each stretcher with its heavy burden, we started back
to the Captain's dugout. The condition of the wounded would
have made us go slowly even though we had the strength to
go faster. And our own condition forced us to stop every few
yards. Carrying a wounded man on a stretcher is, under the
most favorable conditions, a severe task, but to carry them as
we were forced to do in our condition of physical exhaustion,
across muddy fields and up a slippery hill, was almost super-
human.
We had five wounded men, and I played the part of an
extra carrier, relieving first one man and then another, for
there were times during that trip back when a boy would tell
me he could not go another foot. But somehow or other,
after seemingly endless ages we reached the P. C. from which
we had started several hours before. The first flush of dawn
was in the eastern sky it would be impossible to get them
back as far as the dressing-station before daylight came. So
we got them into the Captain's dugout, where the Sergeant got
to work to dress their wounds, crawling now with vermin and
maggots, as best he could, while I started on my way back in
order to get help so that they might be carried back that night.
I have often wondered if those boys are alive. If they are,
they owe it all to that little hero. The D. S. C., which he
received, cannot begin to pay for his valor. The last time I
saw him he was on his way to rejoin his regiment, worrying
lest he be court-martialed for being absent! Of such stuff are
heroes made. The good Captain was killed in the Argonne.
SAM.
After a rather trying spell in the front line we had been
relieved and were in what is technically known as a "reserve
position," some five or six miles behind the actual front line.
We were still "in range," and were, therefore, "dug in" on the
reverse slope of a hill. Now the reverse side of a hill is the
1921.] MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK 615
side facing the opposite way from the enemy, and was always
selected since it offered a natural protection from shellfire.
To add to our safety we had dug ourselves little holes and
over them were all sort of coverings, from ordinary boards to
corrugated iron. Nothing which might add to our safety was
overlooked. But from the valley the hillside presented a
strange, and, in truth, a disreputable appearance. It might well
have been named "tin-can hill." But in the doctrine of "safety
first," beauty must be a very remote consideration. And our
regret was not the lack of beauty, but the lack of a greater
degree of safety. For even here we suffered casualities from
both shellfire and air-bombs. If our ancestors were really
cave-dwellers and cliff-dwellers then well did we imitate them.
We wished only that our caves had been deeper and our cliffs
steeper.
Near the brow of the hill Battalion Headquarters occupied
a large natural cave of rock. The Germans had used it before
us and had left their beds and a few kneeling-benches, carried
from the church in the village nearby. Tucked in a crevice in
the rock I found a bundle of vestments, taken most probably
from the same church. Nor can I think of this particular spot
without recalling the "cooties," all branded with the double-
eagle. One boy declared that he had found one which had
been decorated with the Iron Cross. Be that as it may, I can
testify to the activity of that tribe. They showed a wisdom in
attack which proved them veterans. But for many, the attack
was their last.
Each night the boys went forward to dig trenches in a new
"line of resistance," which was being constructed in case of a
counter attack by the enemy. The daytime was given over to
rest. But the heat of August made sleep almost impossible.
It was a problem to know just what to do. We had no place
to go; we had nothing to read; my supply of writing paper
was so low that I had to ration it, one sheet at a time. There
was a lamentable shortage of dice and cards, and, try as I
might, I could not relieve it. I would have done most any-
thing to be able to give those boys something to occupy their
time and help them forget, or, at least, keep them from think-
ing of the horror of all we had been through. I may be lax
in this respect, though I cannot see why it is wrong to risk a
nickel and right to risk one's life. Nor could I ever hope to
616 MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
convince men (myself included) that they can take chances
with their lives but never with their money.
"Scusi, Padre."
I looked up from the rock on which I was sitting outside
the cave to see Sam standing before me, smiling, his open
mouth showing his gleaming white teeth. Their whiteness
was more noticeable than ever, for his naturally dark com-
plexion had not been brightened by several washless weeks.
"Sit right down here, Sam," I said, throwing away my
cigarette. "You're just the boy I want to talk to." And he
was. For during our last fight a tale had gone the rounds how
Sam had deliberately shot a German who had surrendered
himself. Sam was a well-known character, and, when the
story was told of how he had said, "Camarade not, I shoota
you fora luck," it naturally caused much laughter. But the
oftener I heard the story, the madder I became that one of my
boys, and a Catholic, too, should have done such a thing. For
it was nothing but murder, and I didn't want any of that;
killing is bad enough. So I had kept an eye out for Sam to get
an explanation of the affair.
"Sam," I asked him, "what about that German you shot
after he had surrendered to you? I have heard the story so
often that I'm tired of it. Now you know, or you ought to
know, better than to do a thing like that. To think that one of
my men would do such a dirty, cowardly trick. Why it was
"Now, Padre," he broke in on me, "you jussa leesen t'me.
Heresa what happen. We make a charge downa by da river.
Pretty soon machinagaun she start an' we hava stop. Da
Gapitano say to me, 'Sam, we gootta gat da sunagun.' "All-
righta, Cap,' I say, 'we getta heem.' So the Capitan' he starta
roun' datta way an' I go theesa' way." Here Sam showed me
how he and the Captain planned to get behind the machine
gun by crawling through the woods in a sort of circle.
"Allaright, Padre," he continued, "I starta crawl. Pretta
soon I see da sunagun, right neer a tree. So aft'a while I
takea shot and hitta heem. He fall down. Then he's a stan'
up on his knees and looka 'roun'. When he see me he yell,
'Camrad.' Allaright. Then one han' she start to go down fora
gun. Now whata I gonna do, Padre? I no shoota heem, he
shoota me. So I tell heem, 'Camarade not,' and I shoota heem
for luck."
1921.] MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK 617
"So that's the way it happened is it? You're telling me
the truth, are you? This is no joke, you know, Sam," 1 an-
swered.
"Nowa, Padre, whatta you teenk? Jussa dees mornin' I
receive da Buon Christo in Holy Commun' and you theenk I
tella you lie? Why, Padre, to killa man lika you say woulda
be murd'. And I no killa man lika dat."
"All right then, Sam, that's what was on my mind. To
shoot a man after he had surrendered would be just plain
murder. And I won't stand for anything like that around this
crowd. You were right. You had to shoot him to protect
yourself, since he was evidently trying to get his gun to take
a shot at you. Now what did you want to see me about?"
His smile, which had faded during the above conversation,
came back again as he reached into his pocket and handed
me the money which he found there.
"Hersa twenta franc, Padre. Keep a heem for me."
I laughed loud and long. "So? So Sam's feet are begin-
ning to get cold. The hero of Tripoli, Pittsburgh and the
Marne is weakening at last."
Again the smile departed from that face which God had
made for smiling, as he assured me with all his Italian elo-
quence that his feet were not even chilly.
So it came about that Sam's name was entered in my little
book with the sum of twenty francs to his credit. As a receipt
I gave him a name card with "I. O. U. 20 Francs" written on it.
Sam had started away, but came to an abrupt halt when I
yelled at him.
"Wha's da mat' now, Padre?"
"What's the matter? What's the matter with your arm?"
"My armsa allaright."
"Well, why don't you salute then? You're a fine soldier."
At which he came to attention, saluted, turned on his heel,
and would have gone away to tell the crowd what a "crab" I
was except that he heard me laughing and, turning around,
saw me doubled up with mirth. Then he realized that I was
only kidding him in making him salute. We were spared the
bother of saluting when in action. And then we chaplains,
after someone had persuaded the War Department to make
us remove all insignia of rank and put the Cross on the shoul-
der strap instead of on the collar, never were bothered with
618 MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK [Aug.,
salutes. The only ones who could tell a chaplain then were
the aviators. The soldiers, many of them, thought we were
some sort of strayed civilians in uniform.
A few yards away a Sergeant, who was trying to straighten
out his company roster, stopped working to inform me that
there was nothing yellow about Sam, nor, for that matter,
were any of the Italians yellow. "Believe me, Father, they're
some fighters, those Wops."
"Yellow?" I replied. "Of course he's not yellow. I was
only having a little fun with him. We haven't a yellow man in
the outfit. Yellow men never get to the front. I have to have
a laugh pretty frequently to keep myself from brooding over
the awfulness of this whole thing. And I have to make you
fellows laugh, too. We're all going on our nerve, and a
laugh relieves the tension. Sergeant, a man doesn't gener-
ally do anything wrong if he keeps laughing." And with that
to think about the Sergeant resumed his work.
During the next hour, Sam came back four times, giving
me twenty francs each time. And each time I insisted that his
feet were getting cold, and each time he excitedly denied it.
He came finally with the straw that broke the bank, for this
twenty franc bill made a total of one hundred that he had
given me in the space of about an hour. So I handed him a
hundred francs, and told him to go back and give the fellows
a chance to win their money back.
His eyes wide with surprise, he demanded to know "whoa
tella me" about the game.
"Sam, I've been in this man's army long enough to know
that you're not picking twenty franc bills off the trees. You're
a fine fellow, you are. You win a hundred francs, and then
won't give them a chance at it. And the nerve of you, making
me your banker."
"Padre, you keep a heem. Eef, I take it now I lose it. You
keepa heem, and some day when we get back in soma town I
buya feeda for da crowd."
So I kept it until Sam wrote to me from a hospital, where
he had been sent after being gassed. Then I sent him his hun-
dred francs. Did the crowd get the feed? Well, not the crowd
that lost the money, but I know Sam too well to believe that
he didn't treat the crowd in the ward with him.
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
WHY GOD BECAME MAN.
BY LESLIE J. WALKER, S.J., M.A.
III.
THE WORLD SEEKING GOD.
EEING that the Fall took place within the lifetime
of our first parents, who could, therefore, have
remained in a state of integrity and of super-
natural grace for but a brief space, the surprising
thing is not that there is so little evidence of a
fall, but so much. As an intelligent being, man stands in a
class apart, far above any other vertebrate animal, yet in his
behavior may be so perverse as to become a pathological mon-
strosity. As the psycho-analyst is constantly reminding us, in
the course of evolution something has been lost, and that some-
thing man is ever endeavoring to make up for, or, if possible,
to regain. If, then, at the outset man was free from the per-
turbing influence of passion and concupiscence, and if, as
there is every reason to suppose, his brain-capacity was as
great as, if not greater than, ours, he should have been able
both to know and to worship the true God, even as the theo-
logian affirms. Adam certainly had the same data that we
have for inferring an intelligent Creator as the ultimate and
sustaining Cause of the universe in which he found himself.
He would also, since he was man, have been moved, like us,
by the instinct of curiosity to seek such a Cause, and by the
instinct of submissiveness to worship it. If God chose to re-
veal Himself, he would have been capable of receiving that
revelation.
The teaching of the Church is that man began right, but
almost immediately fell away in the lifetime of our first par-
ents and rapidly deteriorated. This is not the common view
amongst modern anthropologists. They either assume with
Professor Eraser that religion began as a crude form of magic;
or with Professor Marett that it has evolved from a universal
belief in a praeter-natural energy pervading all activity-; or
620 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
with Professor McDougall that man at first ignored the benefi-
cent processes of nature, but was struck with awe by fearful
objects, such as disease and death, pestilence and famine,
storm and flood, etc., which he first animated with intelligence
and will, like his own, then worshipped as demons or gods.
Which of these views the anthropologist adopts depends
mainly upon the assumptions with which he starts. Of evi-
dence either one way or the other there is very little. Paleo-
lithic records do not go back beyond the Aurignacian period,
and are both scanty and ambiguous. Primitive peoples, now
existing, have existed for thousands of years, and so are not
genuinely primitive. Attempts to reconstruct primitive man
and his religious beliefs and practices on the data of modern
psychology can give us at best but tentative hypotheses. We
have no adequate data for testing any theory, still less for re-
pudiating what the evidence of Scripture suggests, and the
teaching of the Church confirms. On the contrary, what data
we do possess can be explained equally well on the hypothesis
of a primitive monotheism as on any other, and probably much
better.
The distinction between beneficent and harmful, regular
and irregular processes, upon which Professor McDougall's
theory is based, could only have arisen after much experience.
At the outset our first parents could have known nothing of
disease and death, pestilence and famine, and but little of other
"terrifying" objects. It is far more probable that they would
have been struck at first by the wonderfully harmonious char-
acter of their surroundings, and the curious adaptability of
most things to human needs. Whence, seeking an explana-
tion, and deriving from themselves the notion of intelligence
and will, they would have "projected" it not into the part, but
into the whole, as the sole rational ground of this harmony and
as the sole object worthy of adoration. Their first emotion of
wonder and awe would have been aroused by harmony, not
discord; and their second emotion would have been gratitude
rather than fearfulness. Whatever they became later, intelli-
gence, prompted by instinct, would at the outset have made
them monotheists.
This is borne out by the belief of the ancient Chinese,
which was almost certainly monotheistic, its object being a
Power "to whom evil of any kind was displeasing, and from
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 621
whom punishment might be expected for any form of wrong-
doing." 1 The Mana-theory of Professor Marett would thus
represent a first stage in the deterioration of this belief. For
practical purposes it is the manifestation that matters; not
what God is, but what He does. Hence a tendency to concen-
trate on active phenomena storms, rivers, the sun, living
things, man, especially men endowed with special insight or
power; and to regard these as indicative of a Divine Power,
the nature of which did not matter so much as the way in
which it became manifest.
The stage which Professor McDougall describes follows
almost inevitably. Retain a belief in supernatural agencies;
concentrate on their more striking manifestations, diverse and
often in appearance contradictory, forget their unifying prin-
ciple, and at once you have many "gods," sun-gods and storm-
gods, water nymphs, and fairies. Worship God in separate
places, ignore the fact that in each cave-sanctuary it is the same
God that is worshipped, ascribe to each a character and a
"history" to suit the tribe of which he is the protector, and
there will not only be many gods, but different gods. Focus
attention on the symbol to the exclusion of what is symbolized,
emphasize the alleged effect of ritual observance rather than
its religious significance, and worship becomes magic.
Such processes of degeneration have characterized reli-
gion throughout its long history, and are by no means absent
today. Impelled by curiosity, man seeks to explain phenom-
ena, but through laziness or carelessness often explains them
wrongly. Convinced that there is a supernatural, but too
indolent to study its laws, he still devises human means of
getting into touch with it, seeks to learn its nature from
erratic and superstitious observances, and thinks to con-
trol its influence by the use of occult symbolism or the wear-
ing of mascots. So, too, eager to realize a purpose, does man
first justify that purpose, then attribute it to God; with the re-
sult that the God of his enemy becomes to him an alien Deity,
while belief in his own Deity grows stronger or wanes, accord-
ing as he succeeds or fails with the purpose in hand. There
was manifest a distinct polytheistic tendency during the Great
War, though the result of it was an intensified skepticism, due
1 Transactions of Third International Congress on the History of Religions,
Oxford, vol. i., p. 106.
622 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
to the fact that polytheism in our age is discredited and
defunct.
If, then, in our enlightened age, monotheistic belief may
be perturbed by the existence of human conflict, what wonder
is it that the warring tribes of old believed, as a rule, in many
gods? If, even with us, the impulse of submissiveness is so
strong, that, should man forget God, he must needs worship a
substitute, what wonder is it that our primitive ancestors
should have forgotten God and substituted for Him the activ-
ities of nature, which they could not account for, but with
which they had practically to deal? If in the days of science
man may still be superstitious, and his worship become formal
and mechanical, what wonder is it that in days when there was
no science, but only hard grind, religion should have degener-
ated into magic, ineffective in reality, yet symbolic at least of
belief in an ultra-human power, and of an earnest desire for
its aid?
It is said of a Hindu workman of today that, being asked
why he worshipped many gods, seeing that he believed also in
one Supreme Being, he answered: the great God is good; He
will do me no harm; it's the little fellows I need to look after.
Once man had fallen, the war that broke out within his nature
was projected into the heavens above; the great God was for-
gotten, and in His place appeared smaller gods, each animating
some object of practical importance, and each to be propitiated
separately according to his function. The scattering of the
tribes also led to diversification of the Deity. Tradition be-
came different, and differences were accentuated by war.
Instead of recognizing in himself the imperfect, yet perfect-
ible, image of God, man made gods in his own image, and at-
tributed to them his own morality that thereby his selfishness,
personal or tribal, might be justified.
Intelligence at this stage is occupied with other and more
practical things than theology. Man seeks the creature, and
uses his Creator as but a means to an end. Yet so soon as
peace arrives and leisure for thought ensues, man seeks Truth
again, and, in consequence, religious belief begins slowly to
emerge from the crudities of animistic polytheism.
When tribes or cities fused, their gods fused, either into
one multiform, many-named Being, or else into a Pantheon.
Between deities apparently disparate and in tradition often
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 623
hostile, reason devises interconnections. Thus do we get
groups of gods, and occasionally a triad, as the Theban triad,
Amon-Mut-Khon. Possibly in this way also arose the Puranic
Triad, Brahma-Siva-Vishnu. It is lack of thought, due to per-
petual strife with nature and man, that leads to Animism and
Polytheism. When peace gives time for reflection, there
arises, at least amongst those who think, a saner outlook on
the universe and a saner view of the Deity. Even where the
result is not pure monotheism, there is at least recognized
one supreme being, such as Jupiter or Zeus or Amon Ra or
Marduk or Auramazda, from whom the other gods have
sprung. Multiplicity evolving from unity is conceptually at
least a possibility, but multiplicity without unity is impossible,
once man begins genuinely to think.
With the advent of a purer religion there arises also a
purer morality. Reflecting on God as the origin and unifying
principle of all nature, man forms not merely a theory of the
universe, but also an idea of its purpose and of his own part
as the chief factor under Providence in the realization of that
purpose. For the Egyptian, God becomes the embodiment of
justice and truth: only by practising these virtues can men
hope to attain happiness in the world that is to come. In the
Mazdeism of the Persian inscriptions Auramazda is depicted
as the one supreme being, who created all things and in whose
name kings rule. There is only one path, that of virtue, which
consists in doing God's will: all else is chaos. Truth is the
root of all good; lying the source of all evil.
Truth and goodness are also identified in the religion of
the Avesta, and are opposed to error and evil. But the latter
are now personified. The God of Knowledge contends with
the spirit of Ignorance and Error, and the vehicle of the war-
fare is man. If he would prosper, in addition to ceremonial
observances, he must lead a simple life, seeking above all
things purity, honesty, and truthfulness. Thus only can he
share in the victory of Mazda, who lived before creation in
infinite Time, which, when the process of strife is over, shall
come back again.
Nowhere does the importance of a right knowledge come
to be recognized more clearly than it does in the religion of
India. In the Vedic period there is as usual a multiplicity of
gods, niost of them personifications of natural phenomena.
624 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
These the poet-thinkers eventually identify: "The Being of
whom the priests speak in many ways and under many names,
is in reality one Being." Varuna is omniscient, knows even
the inner thoughts of men, and both punishes them for sin,
and, when repentant, releases them from its consequences.
The ordered regularity of physical events manifests the Deity,
and a like regularity must characterize both ritual and mor-
ality. Man is dependent on God, yet by worship may increase
the efficacy of Divine Power, and by knowledge may share
in it.
In the Upanishads the idea of obtaining happiness in the
abode of Yama by sacrificing correctly to the gods, is replaced
by the idea of absorption in a world-spirit to be obtained by
correct knowledge and mental discipline. Atman, which in
the Rig-veda meant breath, comes to mean first, the soul of
man, then, the soul of the world, Brahma, which meant prayer,
comes to mean holiness, then the principle of holiness. Atman
and Brahma thus come to be but different aspects, of the one
world-spirit. From it man appears to be differentiated, but
with it in reality is identical. The world of phenomena is
naught but an illusion, which deceives him and allures him
perpetually from his end. Let him treat it as naught, and by
asceticism overcome its allurements, and he will become
merged in dreamless sleep with the Infinite from which now
he seems other.
The chief defect in this philosophy is that, while it insists
that salvation can come only through knowledge, it fails to
provide any genuine knowledge of the principle of Being with
which man is to identify himself, and so to attain peace.
Everywhere in the Upanishads, says Professor Macdonnell, 2
there is a "restless striving to grasp the true nature of the
pantheistic self, now through one metaphor, now through an-
other." Yet ever does this knowledge elude man's restless
mind. "Explain to us the Brahma, which is manifest and not
hidden, the Atman which dwells in everything," demands the
sage in Brihadaranyaka, But in vain.
The result was a violent reaction. Of the nine philosophic
systems which began to arise about the sixth century B. C.,
nine were originally atheistic.
In the Sankhya system and its derivates, Buddhism, Jain-
2 Sanskrit Literature, p. 221.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 625
ism, and the materialistic philosophy of Charvaka, the funda-
mental doctrine of Vedantic philosophy is retained. Salvation
still consists in the knowledge that life is an illusion, its suf-
ferings due to the desire of worldly things, arising from a false
estimate of their value. Asceticism, involving the annihilation
of desire and issuing in unconsciousness, is still the end that is
sought. But Atman and Brahma are ignored; and are ignored
precisely because they are unknowable, and, therefore, value-
less for experience. The instinct of curiosity, thwarted of its
end, revolts against the object which claims to be able to
satisfy it, yet ever fails to do so. Man will save himself. And
yet he cannot. For the instinct of submissiveness also craves
for satisfaction, and cannot find it without God. Of the nine
forms of Atheism, four returned to Theism before long, and
Buddhism on this fundamental issue has become divided
against itself.
The failure of mere philosophy to satisfy man's demand to
know God, is evinced also in the religious history of the Chi-
nese. Neither the Pantheism of the Brahmin nor the Dualism
of the Avesta in the end prove satisfactory as a solution of the
problem of the universe. Laotzu, the dreamer, may possibly
have been influenced by both, but, as a reformer, seeking to
restore peace in an evil and decadent age, he lays emphasis
almost exclusively on the practical. "The Way of heaven is to
benefit, and not injure; the Way of the sage to do, and not
strive." Knowledge is incommunicable, and law shackles life.
Happiness comes from spontaneity, humility, charity. Leave
nature alone. This is the true Way, the Way which eternally
is. For Confucius, his contemporary, the theoretical has less
interest still. His Way is wholly practical. Charity must be
practised, morality taught, but without assigning reasons.
Yet Taoism has evolved a philosophy in which the Way
becomes identical with absolute Truth, and to Confucianism
in practice has been added the religious observances and the
theistic doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism.
In the East the transition from the crudities of Polytheism
to the concept of one divine and absolute Being is halting and
slow. The philosopher neither abolishes the worship of many
gods, nor does he wholly get rid of the idea that they are many.
Rather he blends them in one evolving whole, which is never
clearly distinguished from, and is not infrequently identified
VOL. cxiii. 40
626 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
with, the universe. In the West, on the other hand, philosophy
breaks wholly with the polytheistic beliefs of the populace.
Without discarding traditional observances, it seeks to substi-
tute for the multitudinous and anthropomorphic deities which
were worshipped, the concept of one Supreme Being, imper-
fectly manifest in the universe, but in nature wholly tran-
scending it.
As with Laotzu and Confucius, so with Socrates, the re-
form at first is moral in character. Convention is inadequate,
and often irrational. Therefore, says Socrates, we must an-
alyze and make precise our moral concepts, especially the
concept of the Good. There he leaves the matter, content that
God is the Good, and that with beneficent providence He
watches over man's life and listens to his prayers. But Plato
takes up the idea of an absolute moral standard, and trans-
forms it into the absolute Existent, eternal and immutable,
from which by a dialectic process all other good flows, and
which it imperfectly expresses. The phenomenal world is a
faint copy of the intelligible world; but with it is mingled a
formless, chaotic principle of non-being which destroys the
immutability of the ideas which are expressed in it, and so
transmutes reality into appearance, being into becoming.
Plato has approached very near to the Vedantic and
Buddhistic doctrine that the material world is a mere illusion.
Salvation, too, still flows from true knowledge. But with Plato
the process of salvation consists not in mere ascetical prac-
tices whereby we escape from illusion, but in the positive seek-
ing after truth, whereby error may be transformed. Plato's
Deity is a real God, Who exercises a dynamic influence at
least in the realm of pure thought. This is a distinct gain.
None the less, Plato's Deity is far removed from the concrete,
living, personal God which religion demands, and in vain
does he declare them identical. Neither is it clear how the
second principle, that of non-being, originates, or, how by
means of it, the eternal is transformed into the temporal, and
the realm of pure thought reduced to a mere passing show.
Plato, as a philosopher, moves almost exclusively in the region
of the abstract, though conscious that philosophy cannot rest
there, but must somehow get back to the actual, if it is to exert
any influence on life.
Aristotle sought to remedy the defects of Plato's system
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 627
by substituting for the idea of non-being that of potentiality,
which is genuine capacity for being, involving in itself a tend-
ency or desire of the degree of perfection and reality, which is
connatural to it. The world of phenomena has become alive
again. It is a process, a growth, rich in law and order, and
ever seeking a definite end the realization of the idea that is
implicit within it. But if process be always process towards
some end, the end is logically prior to the process by which it
is attained; and, since the process is real, the end which ac-
counts for it, must also be real; and the ultimate end, the first
mover, real in the highest possible sense, as containing all
possible perfection already actualized within it. This is God,
the plenitude of Being and Life. And, since the highest form
of life is thought, God also is Thought. And since thought is
always of something, God also thinks of something, namely
Thought, which is Himself. God is Thought of Thought.
The richness of Aristotle's concept of God cannot be gain-
said. He is everything that is thinkable, everything that is
good. There is also between the universe and God a manifold
relation. God is its first mover, the exemplar which all things
manifest, the end which all things seek, each in its degree.
He is also the object in the contemplation of which man will
find his truest happiness. But what guarantee is there that
man will attain this happiness? God is immutable, eternal,
all perfect, wrapt up in the contemplation of Himself. Why
should He move formless matter and breathe into it life, and
why, having done so, should He care what happens to it, or
whether what is formed of it attains its end or not?
The Stoics solve this difficulty in Eastern fashion by iden-
tifying God and the Universe, but at the cost of human free-
dom. God is the soul of the universe, the reason which works
in it according to fixed laws, which admit no deviation. The
behavior, of inanimate things, the force that holds them to-
gether, the nature of plants, the instinct of animals, the reason
of man, these things are God. God is the X6yo<; jxep^aTtxo?
of nature; <jTCep;j.aTix,6<; because, though broken in fragments,
it is one in germ, and to unity will ultimately return; Xo &<;
because the whole process takes place in accordance with a
rational and irrevocable law. Nothing can happen contrary
to Providence, because nature and Providence are one. Hence
a sublime optimism, a supreme confidence, an utter indiffer-
628 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
ence to external vicissitudes. To become as God, one has but
to recognize that all which happens, happens inevitably and
in accordance with God's will. This way lies happiness. Evil
is an illusion, which disappears in the harmony of the whole.
The Stoic philosophy, if it be true, affords adequate ground
for imperturbable patience and complete resignation in every
situation that may arise. But the philosophy itself rests mainly
on an analogy. The universe, like man's body, is alleged to
have a soul. It is further assumed that this soul is omnipotent
within the body, and that its behavior is rational, though not
free. Question the assumptions, and the system breaks down.
Why should there be a process, and why, if there be one,
should its laws be inexorable? And if they be inevitable, why
should we for ever strive after the highest? Why not, with the
Epicurean, simply acquiesce, looking merely for tranquillity
of soul? And, again, if God be simply Fate, written with a
capital F, why bother about Him or pray to Him, since His
decrees are immutable?
The result of this conflict amongst the philosophers of the
West was the growth of a skeptical indifference and a live-
and-let-live policy, prompted by despair, in the schools. As in
Egypt, India, China, so in Italy and Greece, the attempt to
probe the mysteries of God's nature eventually breaks down,
and is followed by a reaction in which the existence of God is
doubted or denied. Everywhere does the thinker realize the
vital importance of the knowledge which he seeks, yet nowhere
does he succeed in attaining it with that certainty which alone
can give to knowledge endurance or practical effect.
Meanwhile, the masses are almost wholly unaffected by
the speculations of philosopher and sage. What they want
is a God Who is near to them, a ritual which appeals to their
senses, a religion which can give practical results. The
maxims of Laotzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Seneca, they
can easily grasp, for they are practical in purport. But the
theories which underlie them are too complex and too abstract
to appeal to the majority of mankind. It was doubtless com-
forting to know that the Brahmin had a philosophy of the
Absolute and the Buddhist a ground for his asceticism; but
for the ordinary man the main thing was that the temples
still remained and that he could still offer incense or burn
candles before the statue of his favorite god. The morality
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 629
of the people might be modified by the preaching of this or
that prophet, but Brahminism and Buddhism, Confucianism
and Taoism alike left the religion of the people untouched.
The philosophy of the West was equally inefficacious. It
was something that Plato and Aristotle should have dem-
onstrated the existence of God, but the God whose existence
they had demonstrated, was too remote to appeal to the people
at large; while the Stoic God, Fate, was too impersonal and
rigid to become the object of any lively devotion. In spite of
the satire of philosophers, the common people continued to
worship the man-like gods of their forefathers with the same
old superstitious rites. Such gods they could understand, for
between them and mankind there was no incommensurable
distance, but a striking similarity. They would worship the
philosopher, but they would not worship the object of his
philosophy. Thus the Athenians in 307 sang of Demetrius of
Phalera: The other gods are very far; but thou, thou art
quite near; we see thee, not as a god of wood, or a god of
stone, but as a genuine god. And, in like manner, the Latins
later on were to deify their emperor. In vain did the Stoic
exegesis explain the multitudinous gods which were wor-
shipped, as so many manifestations of the one Divine Spirit.
For the populace it was the manifestations that mattered, not
the Spirit that was said to be expressed in them. The plain
man loves a concrete God, a God Who, if not present in his
midst, shall at least have an intelligible history, a God Who
shall stir him emotionally and shall awaken the enthusiasm of
the crowd.
Yet the philosopher, in spite of his failures, had not
labored wholly in vain. He had stated his problems, and he
had done something more. He had hit upon various strands,
which together would give him the solution. He was right
when he claimed that morality should flow from truth, .that
conduct should ever be guided by knowledge. He was right in
treating God as absolute Truth, to know Whom is to have
happiness and power. He was right in regarding absorption in
carnal and worldly pursuits as the chief hindrance to the at-
tainment of the goal towards which the soul is ever groping.
He rightly insisted that God must be one, and yet that He
cannot be a bare and structureless unity. Almost in Aristotle
and the Stoics, and later on at Alexandria, he attained to the
630 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
concept of the Logos. He was right, too, in insisting upon
immanence; which is necessary if God is to operate in the
world as Providence, or is to be present in man's consciousness
as the source of his strength and inspiration. And, again, in
postulating transcendence; which also is necessary, if man is
to enter into personal relationship with God, or God is to mean
anything more to him than the remorseless and mechanical
energy of a perpetually changing world of phenomena. Even
his very failures were of service, for they convinced him that,
unaided, man is impotent to attain the fullness of that knowl-
edge which he seeks. What the philosopher needed was some-
one who should bring the many strands together, and unite
them in a whole, whose harmonious richness should itself be
testimony to its truth; yet not the whole testimony, for expe-
rience also is needed, that knowledge may be linked with the
certainty which experience alone can give it.
In the underworld of popular religion there were also
many strands of truth. There was no people of the earth
that was not convinced of the existence of a power greater
and more noble than itself, a power which controlled all
things, and blessed them or cursed them to man's use; no
people that did not believe in and invoke divine Providence,
be it under a vast variety of forms; no people that had not at
least a suspicion that in origin these forms, however disparate,
must somehow be one. Underlying all religions is a primitive
monotheism, towards which all religions tend to return. When
the philosopher denied God, the people merely shrugged their
shoulders and continued to worship Him; when he affirmed
that God was one, they listened and almost believed. In this
way much progress was made even amongst polytheistic
nations. The people, too, though they ignored the theories of
the philosophers, were willing enough to write up their
maxims on the walls of the temples, thus giving a Divine
sanction to precepts which tended to raise the tone of morality.
Without adequate means of discerning God's will, the
world was none the less convinced that it is by God's will that
human life should be regulated. Hence a widespread belief
in divine messengers, prophets, oracles, and even incarnations.
God's will must be consulted not only With respect to the
worship He desired, or with respect to matters of conscience,
but also with respect to the dealings of nation with nation.
1921.] WHY GOD BECAME MAN 631
And if the judgments attributed to the gods were but human
judgments projected, it was for the most part his saner and
better judgments that man thus projected, as at the oracle at
Delphi.
There was also a deep conviction that crime and unclean-
ness is offensive to God, and merits divine punishment. Num-
erous were the rites of purification, numerous the sacrificial
rites, by which man confessed his sinfulness and his belief
that God alone could remove it. Nothing unclean can enter
God's presence; therefore, after defilement man must cleanse
himself, especially if his function be the offering of sacrifice.
In the sin of individuals the group participates; therefore must
a scapegoat be found, who shall bear the sins of the commun-
ity, and in whose atonement the community may share by
symbolic eating or drinking or other form of contact with the
victim which is offered, and which God sanctifies.
Numerous legends of man's descent from the gods testify
to his conviction that he, in a special sense, is God's creature.
Legends, no less numerous, of incarnations and of intercourse
between gods and men testify at once to man's belief that God
loves and cares for him, and to his earnest desire to know
God and to get into touch with God. The same earnest desire
is attested by his sacramental washings and meals and by the
ecstatic self-abandonment which characterized his orgiastic
ceremonies. Conscious of his origin and destiny, man is aware
that he often falls from the path by which alone he can attain
it. He also expresses in all manner of ways his desire to re-
turn, yet is conscious that he cannot do so without God's aid :
that, if he is to know God, God must reveal Himself; that, if
he is to possess God, God must first possess him.
In the days before Christ came, man was ever thwarting
God, even as he does now, yet of a surety had he faith in God,
faith in Divine Providence, faith in the efficacy of God's re-
deeming grace. Drawn to the things of the earth, he none the
less realized that it was the things of heaven that mattered,
and was ever appealing to heaven to save him from the sins
that dragged him down. Immersed in occupations which
sought an immediate and practical end, he was none the less
conscious of a higher end, which, though he was loath to think
on it and strove to attain it by short cuts, was yet slowly per-
meating his consciousness, as he pondered the sayings which
632 WHY GOD BECAME MAN [Aug.,
those had handed down, who thought on the deeper realities.
The difficulty was that the latter mistrusted themselves. One
sage had no sooner devised a philosophy than another would
pull it to pieces. The prophet who sought to raise the multi-
tude from its gross superstitions, himself became a prey to
skeptical doubt. He was ever seeking truth, yet truth ever
eluded him, and the nearer he got to it, the further he seemed
to get away from reality. How should the world be saved
from error and sin? This at least he knew, and the world
knew. Salvation could come only through God, Whom the
whole world was seeking. But how should man come to know
God, how discern the truth beneath the symbols, how unite
truth with reality, knowledge with certainty? The world had
advanced far since the day when Adam fell, had made prog-
ress both in religion and morality. But the solution of the
final problem, which alone could save man from himself, ever
escaped him.
The first act of the great drama was over. Both individ-
ually and corporately, in the matter both of goodness and of
truth, man had learned his own impotence. It was time that
the second act should begin.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT.
BY AUGUSTIN PEREGRINE.
T would be idle and dreary to deny what is a
matter of universal experience, namely, that life
is full of disillusionment. We awake some gray
morning to find that our cherished dreams are
dreams. We learn at length and painfully that
the Pot of Gold is at the end of the Rainbow, and, sad to say,
there is neither an elevated train nor a subway express which
will get us there.
It may be said that disillusionment is the process by which
we put substance in the place of shadow, and shadow in the
place of substance. Disillusionment is always sad. It strips
the bloom from confidence, it weakens hope, and often it is
the harbinger of discontent, if not despair. If this is true of
disillusionment in worldly concerns, what shall we say of the
soul which finds itself disillusioned in spiritual things? It is
pitiable at best and serio-comic at worst, depending on the
temperament of the one who is undergoing disillusionment.
But it is of a special and unique disillusionment that I
would speak the disillusionment which can come to a con-
vert in the Catholic Church. It may be the saddest of all. He
prepares to see his high hopes lying low in the dust of what
he took to be his greatest desire. There is a peculiar quality
about this kind of disillusionment. It is important to under-
stand something of it.
When his disillusionment comes, the convert has one com-
fort. He can never say that he was not warned by well-wish-
ing friends against becoming a Catholic. They tried hard to
obviate his disillusionment by keeping him safely out of the
Catholic Church.
Vague objections which began with: "Oh! but you can
not be serious," became more specific. Authorities were
quoted freely. Accusations grew more pointed and personal.
For generalities, individual reasons were substituted. Friends
began to express the fear that the poor convert was losing
weight in various ways. All this was not without its mediate
634 DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT [Aug.,
effect on the mind and nervous system of the convert. To the
objections of his family and intimates were added those of
other friends. These friends told him that the Catholic Church
was like a house in that it had a front door and a back door.
Converts, they said, Were taken in at the front door. They
saw nothing of the other door, the one at the rear, until, dis-
illusioned, they used it for an exit, or in not infrequent cases
for a fire-escape. His friends told the convert that there were
parties within the Catholic Church who fought with bitterness.
Outwardly, they said, all was serene; inwardly, strife and dis-
sension was rampant. Was not the convert asked to read an
article in the Ecclesiastical Review which discussed frankly,
that is as frankly as might be in a Catholic discussion, the
question of pastors who had been known to be tyrants and
assistants, who had been suspected of being unlovely and un-
lovable ?
Then, too, there were churches with badly done statues,
blatant in audible decorations; there were altars cheap and
tawdry with relatively white paint and much gilt. This cap-
ital accusation ran something like this : There is an indefinable
quality which we know as good taste. This sapience is the
crown and flower of a well trained and properly ordered
mind. The impression conveyed was that this quality and
Catholicism were mutually exclusive. The words "ugliness"
and "sordidness" were used with such a measure of conviction,
and so frequently, as to suggest that with both qualities the
convert was not unacquainted; in fact, the impression was
created that between him and them a sort of intimacy had
grown up. Another said that he had it on good authority that
there were some pleasant people in the Catholic Church, how-
ever, he rather felt that . . . But here the bewildered convert
who had asked his friend to discuss Catholicism from the point
of its effect on the soul, lost the thread of his informant's
speech !
As soon as his friends had exhausted the catalogue of
inanimate reasons against the convert's becoming a convert,
they turned with some vigor to the personal deterrents. They
told him that while he would be welcome at first, matters
would be entirely different after he had become one of the
family of Rome. He was told that Catholics, in their zeal to
compass sea and land in order to make one proselyte, used
1921.] DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT 635
this sort of welcome as long as the convert was "outside;"
once "within," he would find it vanish as the ingratiating
smile fades from the faces of one who beguiles another to his
destruction. He was told that there are priests who are not
intellectual and, after all, if a person is not intellectual con-
sciously, what hope has he? He was warned that the Catholic
Church pays a deal of attention to the poor a sign, be it said,
that she is over Apostolic in her methods. Apostolic means
antiquated. Minds are more advanced in this glorious twen-
tieth century in which we have had the unparalleled fortune
to be born. The poor are well enough as "cases." They give
us a target for our benevolence, and our benevolence returns
to us in the coin of freedom from dissatisfaction with our-
selves. Furthermore, the convert was assured (on the ground
of positive ignorance) that he would find no congenial souls
in the Catholic Church. Now and then he would doubtless
meet those who were well-meaning, but they would hardly be
successfully cultivated.
There was one charge which was brought against the
Church so often that it became a sort of refrain. It took on the
nature of a critical chorus which was added with entire im-
partiality to any adverse criticism. It was this: "But you
know the Catholic Church is thoroughly mediaeval." Now if
you want to discredit anything in the mind of a modern who
exults in his modernity, call it "mediaeval." This unanswer-
able criticism was calculated to disarm completely the inten-
tion of the convert to journey into the Church, which was by
this time no less than a jungle in the minds of his friends.
By others who did not warn him, the convert was con-
sidered simply and completely mad. "Poor Blank! Have you
heard? Yes, a Catholic. Sad; but I have thought for some
time that there was something just a shade well, unusual,
shall we say? about him."
Fortified by these warnings, the hapless convert set his
face to his task again, and renewed his determination at all
risks to be one of those who are enclosed in the Fisherman's
Net. His hope was high when once he had made this decision
a step, it may be said, which left him breathless. Having
determined to begin again his work of thinking through the
problem which faced him, he began his days of uncertainty.
Before he decided finally to venture forth into the un-
636 DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT [Aug.,
known, his mental processes, if we may call them such, were
strangely reminiscent of the see-sawing days of his youth. At
one moment he would be sure that he had come to the point
where he knew that he wished to be received; when the
moment came, he would be conscious of a feeling directly
opposite and equally strong. At one time his way seemed
transparently clear; at another, nothing was not obscure.
He was at a loss to account for this complete change. A Cath-
olic friend suggested the devil, but the convert was not sure
that he considered this explanation tactful, though he saw
that, on the Catholic hypothesis, it might be supposed to ac-
count for the facts. What troubled him was that he could not
be sure of what he would "feel," supposing that he did receive
the grace and courage to be received. Would he be disap-
pointed? Oddly enough, it did not occur to him, at this time,
that the Church might or could be disappointed in him.
Days passed. At times he seemed to be seeing spiritual
things through the wrong end of a telescope. There were
other days when all but spiritual considerations faded; they
alone remained in proper perspective. At no time during this
period could the most vigorous imagination have defined his
state of mind as tranquil or composed. He began and con-
tinued to feel rather like the person who is told by the doctor
that the operation is imperative, and that if he survives, he
will be vastly better off; but he has a bad heart.
Looking back on what he considered precious in the past,
and with no little trepidation, the adventurer husbanded his
strength, and while his resolution held firm he was received
into the Catholic Church. His last pre-Catholic memory was
hearing the priest say: "Quid petis ab Ecclesia?" and the con-
vert answered with a fervor which even the priest could not
suspect: "Fidem!"
Long afterwards, the convert was listening to another,
who like himself had been a wild olive branch, and the other
said, a few days after his reception : "But I feel that I am still
dreaming; I feel so simplified." He was not dreaming, unless
reality is dreaming; and truly he had been simplified. Al-
though the convert would be hard pressed to clothe his initial
experience in words, any such attempt would be begun by
stating that there is a primary sense of relief and relaxation;
relief because he knows that he has issued from the labyrinth
1921.] DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT 637
of his confusion, and relaxation which can be described best
by saying that his whole being has been simplified, made
straight, cleared, and enlightened by the love of God.
But we are considering disillusionment.
Figure to yourself a soul. Life had not spared it. For
a long time it had been groping, blind and troubled, with none
to see its blindness, and without anyone who was able to offer
a solution for its trouble.
Gradually one conviction began to emerge from the con-
fusion of its mind : There are two possibilities either there is
such a thing as certitude in matters of the soul, and that certi-
tude is the truth that Catholicism is Truth; or there is no certi-
tude at all. Either all that the Catholic Church claims is true,
or else it is impossible to know truth. We may only long for
it; we may say, "would that it were so," we may guess at it as
we please in our pursuit of a Will-o-the-Wisp which some-
times goes under the pen-name of Private Judgment or Hu-
manit-Arianism. In his search for truth man craves mysteries,
which are God's poetry; but the understandable mysteries, the
logical mysteries, if I may so say, of the Catholic faith are too
obvious for a mind dimmed by over-much introspection. Fail-
ing the revealed and communicated secrets of Catholicism, the
mind which is not yet ready to be taught by them constructs
mysteries of its own.
The search for truth outside the Catholic Church is a
series of individual attempts, on the part of honest souls, to in-
vent or produce mysteries which shall answer at least partially
to the mysteries which Christ gave to the Church as the food
of the soul. Man-made mysteries which are more elaborate
than God's mysteries those divine figures of speech which
communicate directly to the soul the truth which leads to
union with God have no special merit except that frequently
they lead one who is haunted by the sense of their inadequate-
ness, to make the act of submission which precedes enlighten-
ment at the hands of the Holy Spirit. While one is under the
domination of these self-made substitutes for the mysteries of
Catholicism, one likes to call them variously, "thought," or "my
philosophy of life," or "as I see it." They are all akin to that
mental form of shadow-fighting which imagines that the ex-
pression of one's self can be made before one has a self to
express. Later, one sees that until Christ lives in us, we have
638 DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT [Aug.,
no self to express. As soon as He does live in us, we are no
longer in danger of mistaking selfish expression for the growth
of personality.
This was a by-path down which the convert strayed until
he saw that he was following an ignis fatuns. In time the fact
that the path led nowhere became evident, and he retraced
his steps.
Having examined the evidence for the truth of Catholicism
as best he could, the convert paused. He thought that he
was thinking. As a matter of fact, he was merely shifting his
likes and dislikes, seeking to find certitude in satisfaction with
himself. That certitude never arrived.
Only one course remained. At length the convert deter-
mined to stake all on the supreme adventure of faith. The
difficulty began to make itself felt at this time. There were
years of association to disregard and habit-grooves to over-
come. Unsuspected prejudice like a masked assailant rose
up and attacked him. What if friends were right after all?
What if experiences in the past had been what they seemed
at the time to be? What if Rome were a pose impressive as
a spectacle, but as deadly hollow as all poses when one "saw
behind the scenes?" What if the soul were escaping from the
Scylla of uncertainty to the Charybdis of baseless over-defin-
ition? What if it all did not matter at all?
Deciding, however, that if it was a chance, it was a royal
chance, the convert, somewhat disheveled, went on. He was
led by the Shepherd Who smiled at the soul's misgivings, not
in derision, but with the sympathy which is not divorced from
humor, because it is perfect.
Remembering poignantly all his hopes, the convert set foot
on the unknown land of the Catholic Church. At last the soul
was actually in the land of its dreams. Its presence there
made the disillusionment which came all the more vivid.
Having left its former associates and associations, alone in that
indescribable separateness which only the convert feels, it
could look around and in its almost perfect detachment take
account of its state. Here it was finally in the Church. It met
flesh-and-blood priests and people. It met them often and
intimately. Not long after this, it penetrated the fastnesses of
a Religious House. There it saw priests living and working
1921.] DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT 639
in an atmosphere which left no doubt as to the source of their
inspiration. It may as well be admitted first as last that at
this time the convert was allowed (I whisper it) to see the
"inner workings of the Catholic Church" a shibboleth with
which to conjure! Make of it what you will.
The result of these events was that the convert realized,
with something of a shock, that his disillusionment was at
hand.
Illusion vanished. All that the soul had hoped for so
earnestly all that, and immeasurably more was true! In-
stead of finding a perishable welcome, the convert discovered
among priests and people the sort of astonishing understand-
ing which left him speechlessly grateful. In the place of un-
intellectual priests, he found a community of men keenly in-
terested in everything of the mind which could interpret the
soul.
And his soul found the poor of Christ. Perhaps they
were the best of all.
The men among whom the convert's lot was cast all bore
a sort of family resemblance. One day the convert put this
look into words which their actions suggested: "By this shall
all men know that you are My disciples, if you love one an-
other." The convert lives in a world which is so disillusioned
that each morning he rises with the feeling that he imagines
possesses those who learn that they have inherited a fortune
only the value of his fortune is eternal.
Interiorly, "something has happened" to the convert. He
is possessed of a liberty of which he did not dream as a non-
Catholic. The explanation is simple. Submission of one's
own will is enfranchisement in the kingdom of God. The soul
makes conquests by retreating from its selfishness. Control of
one's self is the result of abandoning one's self to Christ, the
Divine Person Who is the whole Truth. By giving up the right
to regulate its actions, the soul acquires the power to regulate
them. A conversion is a translation into flesh and blood of
Christ's words that he who would find his life must lose it.
Perhaps only those who have left the utter deadness which
immediately precedes one's coming into the Church, can ap-
preciate adequately the cost of a conversion. One does not
mind giving up things, or even people, but that feeling that he
has lost himself that he can no longer be conscious of spir-
640 DISILLUSIONMENT OF A CONVERT [Aug.,
itual awareness which comes just before the glorious light of
faith floods the soul, that is hard. The absolute freedom which
follows is the first fruits of conversion. Freedom seems to be
the herald of a happiness which is like an atmosphere. Stand-
ing on the outskirts of the multitude, the convert sees Our
Lord at a distance, and, with inexpressible wonder, knows that
Our Lord has seen him hastening towards Him.
No convert can ever explain the overwhelming sense of
unworthiness which accompanies or rather is a part of his
happiness. Freedom and Happiness. Than these there is no
greater gift, except Charity, which should be their crown.
Freedom, the convert has learned, is the child of discipline.
Happiness is the fellowship of the Gross. Charity is Christ in
us, the hope of glory.
Long ago, as men reckon time, a great convert said: "Qui
enim in Domino vocatus est servus, libertus est Domini." The
joy of the convert is his consciousness that he is free because
he is Christ's slave. He longs to have others similarly disillu-
sioned, and the desire nearest his heart is that more may come
to know, by the favor of God, that Freedom, Happiness, and
Charity can be theirs only when they have tasted the sweet-
ness of Christ's slavery, and felt the lightness of His burden,
and the comfort of His yoke. The door of the Church stands
open in invitation. Always she is inviting men in the name
of her Lord to enter and dwell in the security of the House
which is founded on a Rock, against which no power can pre-
vail, because the Master of the House is filling it with His
Presence.
H. G. WELLS ON THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A.
VERY man is in a sense a poet, Carlyle tells us
somewhere, when he reads a poem with genuine
comprehension. In like manner, without any
pretensions to the title of historian, an interested
student of times gone by, may surely form an
opinion as to what factors are necessary for the building up of
one who is to instruct his fellows in the difficult and elusive
subject of history. In the first place, it is quite clear, since
bricks or the like must be forthcoming for the building of
houses, that the would-be historian must be possessed of all
the available facts regarding the period of which he is pro-
posing to treat. In the second place, he must have purged
himself of all bias. He must not imitate Dr. Johnson who,
in his Parliamentary reports, did not "allow the Whig dogs
to have the best of it." If the "Whig dogs" had the best of it,
much as it may go against his grain, he must faithfully report
the fact. He must not only paint Cromwell, wart and all, but
how much harder a task he must scrupulously refrain,
though never so ardent a lover of the Commonwealth, from
painting Charles I. with a wart which was wanting in real life.
Lastly, he must be born with a sense of historical perspective
or, if not born with it, he must strive by prayer and fasting
to come by it, if, indeed, it is a thing which can be come by
when not inborn.
It is just the absence of this perspective, of the ability to
place themselves in the environment in which the persons with
whom they are dealing carried on their existence, which causes
writers to make such a muddle of their accounts of bygone
events. Take the ever-recurring case of Galileo not one of
which we have any reason to feel proud. Yet Huxley, cer-
tainly with no bias for Rome, thought that on the whole "the
Pope and the Cardinals had rather the best of it." There is
only one possible explanation for this conclusion on his part,
namely, that he had really succeeded in getting into the atmos-
phere of the period. When one does that; when one appre-
VOL. CXIII. 41
642 H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY [Aug.,
elates the irritating kind of person that Galileo himself was;
when one grasps the general attitude of everybody Catholic
and Protestant towards matters of the kind in question; in a
word, when one tries, in imagination, to forget the twentieth
and live in the seventeenth century; then, even if we cannot
forgive, we can certainly understand, and most surely should
excuse all the events in that unfortunate struggle. Indeed, we
shall emerge from our study with the conviction that, pace the
undying and apparently unkillable falsehoods of so many
Protestant manuals, Galileo, from the point of view of that
day, really received uncommonly mild treatment.
These, perhaps, rather jejune reflections on history and
historians have been called forth by consideration of an
obiter dictum by Mr. H. G. Wells, who has lately, as all the
world knows, become the author of an ambitious and much
boomed Outline of History. I confess that I will not
go to Mr. Wells for information on history. When I want
candies, I go to a confectioner, but for meat, I apply to a
butcher. I know no man who can supply more delightful
candies than Mr. Wells, when he wishes to do so. Kipps and
The Wheels of Chance are a constant joy, and I should be
afraid to say how many times I have read both of them. And
I hope to re-read them time and again. It is true that dullness
if one may venture on the word hangs round many of the
later and unduly didactic books. Mr. Britling Sees It
Through must always remain a really valuable historical docu-
ment, showing how the War reacted on a fairly typical middle
class family. But it is hardly a story; certainly not a romance.
Frith's Derby Day and his Railway Station will always be in-
teresting like Hogarth's pictures. Yet no one will claim for
them a place in the first rank of works of art. Mr. Wells can
tell a story: that all will admit. There seems great doubt as
to whether he can write a history.
A review of his book in Art and Archxology, surely as
neutral a terrain as can be found in North America or, indeed,
anywhere else, complains, I observe, amongst other things,
that "the chief defects of the book are the faulty perspective
and proportions, and the preposterous valuations. Nearly
three hundred pages are wasted on geologic seons and conjec-
tural prehistoric human history, for which a brief chapter
would have sufficed. More space is given to Philip and Alex-
1921.] H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY 643
ander of Macedon than to the civilization and literature of
Greece from Salamis to Chaeroneia. The literature and law
of Rome and their influence are altogether ignored. The Ren-
aissance is lost to sight and the entire political history of
modern Europe from 1400 to 1800 muddled and skimped, in
two confused and confusing chapters on the 'Renascence of
Western Civilization' and 'Princes, Parliaments and Powers.'
The two chief topics of nineteenth century history for Mr.
Wells seem to be the scholarship of Karl Marx and the bad
education of Gladstone." Mr. Belloc, in the London Mercury,
a leading literary journal, made some equally severe criticisms
on Mr. Wells' book, to which the latter replied in a rather
angry letter. With the tone of this and with the accusation of
unfairness hardly, I thought, sustained I have nothing to do,
but there was one sentence in it which, on account of its rela-
tion to a subject which has much interested me and of which
I have made some study, arrested my attention, and it is to
that, as a kind of index of the writer's mentality, that I want
to devote some small comment. Here is the sentence:
Christianity, he tells us, was "one of the numerous blood
and salvation religions that infested the decaying Empire."
There he leaves it: there, we must assume, is his compendious
judgment of Christianity as an historical fact. Let us analyze
the statement and see how far the different parts are capable
of being sustained. "The numerous blood and salvation re-
ligions" were they so numerous? I suppose that those cults
which used the Taurobolium are the "blood and salvation re-
ligions" to which he alludes. It is not always easy to arrive at
a clear knowledge of these ancient cults and their ceremonies,
but of this particular one we have a full account in the works
of the poet, Prudentius. In the story, "Red Magic," 1 Father
Martindale, S.J., gives an account of the ceremony from the
point of view of a boy spectator. The bulls, which are to be
the victims in the affair, are brought forth decorated with
garlands and ornaments "painfully, as in a nightmare, he
watched the destined four [i. e., the human participants] pass
through the little door and stand beneath the perforated roof
(on which were standing the bulls which were to be sacri-
ficed) : watched the priests raise simultaneously their tri-
1 In the volume, called In God's Nursery, a book which deserves a wide circula-
tion. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
644 H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY [Aug.,
angular knives, and slice them through the great veins in the
bulls' throats. The blood spouted furiously out, drenching the
floor, pouring violently through the holes on to the votaries
beneath. Through apertures in the side of the platform the
frantic crowd could see the three men and the woman soaking
themselves in the crimson stream, flinging themselves on back
and side and face, kneading the blood into ears and eyes, hair
and beard, mouthing and swallowing it. At last, when the
carcasses lay bloodless and still, the four came out, 'regener-
ated for eternity,' 'hideous to behold.' '
Almost a paraphrase of Prudentius, it is a horrible picture,
but we must look on it if we are to understand what is im-
plied by Mr. Wells' statement that Christianity was but one
of the numerous "blood and salvation religions" of the day.
As far as scholars have been able to ascertain, this disgusting
ceremony came into the Roman Empire with the worship of
the Magna Mater or Gybele from Phrygia. It is far too com-
plicated a subject to be unraveled or even displayed in an
article such as this but, in a sense, the worship may be said to
have been, in its origin, that of the great, beneficent earth from
which all things spring and that the ceremony in question,
with many another accretion, was grafted on to it, though not
absolutely confined to it, for the first recorded Taurobolium
took place during the reign of Hadrian at Puteoli and was in
honor of Venus Cselestis, possibly by Roman syncretic methods
associated with Cybele. At any rate in A. D. 134 we hear of it
for the first time in connection with the Romans. The last
recorded instance seems to have been in the fourth century,
and the scene was a minor temple of the goddess (the great
temple being on the Palatine Hill), which stood close to where
St. Peter's now is. And, by the way, let us note that the Taur-
obolium must have been of rare occurrence, no doubt for one
reason, because it was an exceedingly expensive ceremony.
But that it was rare seems to follow from the fact that at
Naples and Rome, as we have stated, it was thought worth
while to set up a memorial, stating that at such a time a Taur-
obolium was held in that particular place. Such memorials
would be absurd in the case of ceremonies which were of con-
stant occurrence. Further it seems probable, though not cer-
tain, that the Taurobolium became engrafted on to the worship
of Mithras, as to which it may not be amiss to devote some
1921.] H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY 645
little consideration, if only because so much mischievous use
has been made of this topic by imperfectly informed writers.
No doubt we have to thank Renan very largely for this,
for it was his suggestion that it was a race between Christian-
ity and Mithraism, in which the former did win, but the latter
might have done so. Putting it a little crudely, that is about
what his statement amounted to, and it seems a good deal to
build up on a substructure of carvings supplemented by a few
allusions in controversial documents, for it must be remem-
bered that every Mithraic document has utterly perished in the
(from our point of view most unfortunate) destruction of all
pagan records of a perishable character by the early Church.
We must not be misled by the number of Mithraic caves or
grottoes, that is the temples of the sect which were always
underground. Whether we are right in looking upon these
places as what we should today call "lodges" or not, it is
quite certain that they were all small and that none would
accommodate more than one hundred worshippers. Hence
when we read of five (I think six have now been discovered)
Mithraic temples at Ostia, it means at the outside some five or
six hundred adherents in that important place. No doubt
these temples were everywhere throughout the Empire, from
the northern line of the Sahara to the Limes Imperii, where
Hadrian drew his wall from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Carlisle.
They have been discovered in these and many other places,
and the very fact that they were subterranean, no doubt ac-
counts for the large number which have been preserved, where
the fanes of other sects have been demolished and lost to us.
Mithraism was essentially a soldier's religion, and the
soldiery of Rome, which went everywhere, took this and other
of their beliefs to all parts of the Empire. It was not merely
a soldier's religion, but a purely masculine religion which
excluded female adherents, a very potent reason why it never
could have been a successful rival to Christianity, even if we
envisage the conflict from a purely historical point of view
and apart from all higher considerations. Mithraism was a
highly picturesque religion. It had its various grades, its
secrets, its initiation ceremonies, its ceremonial dresses. Men
have always loved "dressing up," and the possession, real or
supposed, of "secrets" unknown to the crowd, and all secret
societies live more or less on these tendencies. No doubt.
646 H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY [Aug.,
there is some resemblance, perhaps purely apparent, between
the methods of Mithraism and those of Freemasonry (at least,
as understood by those outside the fold). Mr. Kipling in
his Puck of Pook's Hill, has made his Roman officer an ad-
herent of this religion and attributed to it secret signs and
passwords which, of course, it may have had. Far be it from
us to deny this amount of freedom of interpretation to a
novelist when he is writing a novel. Let us not forget, while
we are on this topic, that the late Monsignor Benson made
Mithraism the motif of one of the most penetrating stories in
that admirable book, The Mirror of Shalott.
This religion was quite distinct from that of Cybele; it was
of Iranic origin, whilst the other was Phrygian. If, as is quite
likely, the Taurobolium was introduced into Mithraism, which,
let us carefully bear in mind, was not, like Christianity, an
exclusive religion, then Mithraism may be counted as another
of the "blood and salvation" religions. But we are told that
they were "numerous." Where are the rest? Candidly, I see no
justification for the word "numerous." The legend of Attis
was part of the Cybele myth in its later days at any rate, and
the self-mutilations of pagan priests and worshippers mostly
seem to have been associated with these or very closely con-
nected beliefs. No I do not see where the numbers are to be
found. Nor do I think that the words "infested the decaying
Empire" can be justified. No doubt, the desire is to describe
Christianity with what might be called its fellow puerilities
like Mithraism, as the bacilli of decay which flourish on dead
or dying bodies. But is this historically accurate? No doubt,
it is a profound truth that we all "die daily;" that our period
of decay commences with the day on which we were born or,
more accurately perhaps, with that on which we were con-
ceived. Yet one would hardly talk of a youth of twenty or a
man of forty as being naturally and necessarily in a state of
decay though, no doubt, twenty or forty years nearer to the
grave than at the day of his birth.
Rome fell, so the text-books put it, in 476, and whatever
significance we may attach to that term perhaps a less ex-
tended meaning than we might have done before reading Mr.
Belloc's Europe and the Faith we can hardly quarrel with
the statement that the Empire was then in a state of decay.
But between that date and the date when Christianity, I will
1921.] H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY 647
not say had been introduced, but had acquired some definite
position in Rome, many years elapsed, more than have passed
since white men first made a home in North America. And
what happened during those years? In B. G. 29 Octavius, re-
turning to Rome in triumph, closed the doors of the Temple of
Janus, and closed they remained until A. D. 242, when the
great epoch of the Pax Romana, perhaps the most wonderful
era that the world has ever seen, came to an end. During
that time, as never since, travelers could and did pursue their
ways in peace and security over excellent roads made and
maintained by the government and in all parts of the known
world. With long continued peace came the corresponding
prosperity, yet this is just the time when Christianity passed
through childhood into early youth, when incidentally the
other religions just mentioned were in existence in Rome.
Was the Empire really a decaying institution during all this
period? If so, we must seek a new definition of the word
decay. I can find no real justification for the statement.
Still less can I find any possible justification for the truly
astonishing lack of historical perspective exhibited in the re-
maining member of the short paragraph with which I have
been dealing. Christianity is contemptuously dismissed as
just one of those absurd and out-of-date religions which pul-
lulated in the empire at the time of its decay just that, and
nothing more! If that thesi's is to be sustained, we must
ask for an explanation of a fact which is carefully ignored in
the paragraph and almost equally neglected in the book about
which all this pother arose. Why did this particular absurd-
ity go on whilst the others came to an end? None but the
willfully blind can fail to see that this is a matter which must
be cleared up before we can even begin to discuss the thesis
in question. Cybele and Attis are gone; gone is the Magna
Mater Deorum, gone too Mithras with Astarte, Isis, the whole
heterogeneous pantheon of later Rome. These have strayed
so far from memory that it is only by the utmost patience and
research that scholars can wring their secrets from slabs and
from the furious comments of their Christian adversaries.
Where is Christianity today? If it was just one of these num-
erous absurdities, why and how has it taken the place it holds
today, and has held for centuries? How is it that this par-
ticular absurdity has, pace Mr. Wells, secured the veneration
648 H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY [Aug.,
and belief of an overwhelming preponderance of the best in-
tellects of all ages? Those who desire to disparage revelation
are confronted at the very outset of their task with two facts,
anthropological or historical, or whatever one may like to
call them, which must be explained, namely the existence of
the Jews and the spread and existence of the Catholic Church.
Believers in revelation have a satisfying answer to these ques-
tions: no other explanation has been put forward which will,
for a moment, hold water.
The fact of the matter is that one almost loses patience
when one tries to read the works of those who fondly imagine
that they are dealing scientifically with the matter of Com-
parative Religion. I remember a celebrated remark of a
jealous rival as to another scholar's edition of Kant. "Mr.
does not understand German; he does not understand English,
and he does not understand Kant!" Many of these writers
understand neither science nor religion nor what is entailed in
a just comparison. Fluellen is their prototype. Alexander and
Harry of Monmouth must, by some means or another, be made
to correspond "if you look in the maps of the world, I warrant
you shall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Mon-
mouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a
river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Mon-
mouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my
brains what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one, 'tis
alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in
both." Buddhists have rosaries, and so do Catholics : see how
the latter have copied the former. An explanation which ex-
plains, is not necessarily the true explanation and, with the
abacus under our eyes, it surely is not difficult to reach that
modest pitch of imagination which will enable us to think it
possible that counting by beads may have originated in more
than one mind and in more than one place.
Fluellenism is everywhere in modern folk-lore (which as
a young, but very valuable, science lends itself to the incur-
sions of the ardent and little instructed amateur), even in
works thought by many to be magistral, such as the Golden
Bough. But it out-Fluellens Fluellen to suggest that Chris-
tian Baptism, so simple, cleanly, inexpensive, everyday, has
any connection of origin, either directly or by common source,
with the complicated, filthy, costly, infrequent Taurobolium.
1921.] H. G. WELLS ON CHRISTIANITY 649
Before leaving this matter it should be freely admitted that
there are cases where the Church has deliberately taken hold
of some Pagan ceremony or idea and, so to speak, exorcized
and reconciled it in order to make use of it, just as the Edict
of Theodosius commanded that pagan temples, after being
purified, should be used for Christian worship. There is a
true and a false way of looking at this, and no one has put the
former better than Mr. Mallock (in his Is Life Worth Living?)
I feel sure, though I cannot recover the reference. In discuss-
ing this very question, he pictures the Church as a majestic
being seated on a rock in the midst of a tempestuous sea, on
whose boiling waves are tossed a multitude of pieces of wreck-
age. Hundreds of these pass by apparently unnoted, certainly
untouched, but every now and then, as if in response to the
thought: "Here is something of which I can make use!" some
fragment is recovered and incorporated for ever into that
edifice which has for its foundation a rock. It is the choice
and the use made of it which count, not the mere fragment;
nor very much, save to the curious antiquary, its actual source.
"Just one of a number !" One might say that Shakespeare
was just one of a number of poets who adorned that great
period of literary activity which we call the Elizabethan Age.
One might say it, and it would be unimpeachably true. But
it would be mighty poor criticism.
A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST.
BY ALBERT R. BANDINI.
N the midst of a vast literature whose tendencies
are frankly and often grossly materialistic, there
are in Italy today many notable writers uphold-
ing spiritual principles and Catholic thought. It
seems a good omen that the greatest literary
event of the present time, a book that has deeply stirred the
Italian nation, should be a Life of Christ. When it began to
be rumored that Giovanni Papini, that singular and irrepres-
sible Florentine genius, was working on a Life of Christ,
public interest was aroused to a high pitch, and when it was
further stated that the Life was to be written in the Orthodox
sense, surprise stunned the literary fraternity thus called
because literary people do so love each other and there was
no lack of anticipatory scorn and enthusiasm.
For Orthodoxy and Papini were not born twins he is by
nature a rebel against all conventionalities and traditions, and
perfectly happy when he can show that a hero is but a stuffed
puppet. His books are similar to punitive expeditions:
whether he chooses to invade the philosophical, the artistic or
the literary field, he comes back after having run through with
his pen a number of popular idols. Typical Papinian books
are The Twilight of the Philosophers, in which he disdainfully
picks to pieces all modern philosophers from Kant down, and
Stroncature, a strong idiomatic Florentine title word which
may be inefficiently translated as "hacking away," and indi-
cates the demolition of many a literary fame. Papini's career
covers a period of twenty-five years of literary activity he
started very early, as he is now barely forty and his path is
strewn with the ruins of accepted reputations over which is
scattered the salt of his contempt.
As a critic, Papini is a most dangerous fellow, with a tre-
mendous fund of erudition, a crushing power of logic, and all
the resources of that most destructive weapon: ridicule. He
does not deal with his victims with soft-spoken irony: he
places them on the pillory, and loudly laughs at them. His
1921.] A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST 651
style is extremely personal: it is strictly Papinian, and it will
probably remain unimitated, not because it is inimitable, but
because it is too daring. In a writer of less intellectual vigor
than Papini, his popular Tuscan tongue, generously sprinkled
with frank Florentine idioms, would become merely vulgar
and nasty. There is nothing bromidic about it, because Papini
is not accustomed to mince words: he calls a spade a spade
simply because there is no harsher word for it. Papini is a
plebeian, and does not care who knows it; he is proud of it,
inordinately proud of being a plebeian before whom aristo-
crats, professors and "leaders" of every kind must acknowl-
edge inferiority. He has pushed himself to the front in spite of
all handicaps by sheer strength of will and intelligence, and
he is ready to defend his place against all comers. As a com-
parison with his solitary and disdainful personality and with
his powerful style of massing words, hand-wrought out of raw
language ore, I cannot think but of Carlisle in English liter-
ature; yet even Carlisle is an aristocrat and Papini a plebeian.
It was, then, natural to wonder how such a writer might
put sufficient gentleness and dignity in his treatment of the
figure of Jesus while, of course, it was even a matter of greater
wonder how Papini, who had always loudly proclaimed his
atheism, scoffed at the Church and nearly blasphemed Christ,
could now show himself in a totally opposite role.
Evidently, he has "returned to Christ;" he says in the
preface to his book : "How the writer has succeeded in finding
Christ again, by himself, walking over many roads, all finally
ending at the foot of the Gospel Mountain, would be a tale too
long and also hard to tell. But his example that of a man
who always felt, even as a boy, a repulsion toward all accepted
creeds, toward all churches and all forms of spiritual vassal-
age, and passed then, with delusions so much the deeper as
his enthusiasms had been perfervid, through the newest and
most varied experiences he could find the example of this
man, I say, who has realized in himself the ambitions of an
age almost without parallel unstable and restless the example
of such a dreamer and madcap who, after running wildly
around, comes back close to Christ, has perhaps a meaning
not only private and personal."
That Papini is sincere in the sentiments he now expresses
and in his regret of former offences, may be taken for certain.
652 A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST [Aug.,
He is nothing, if not sincere: his sincerity has always been
almost akin to effrontery: a defiant, aggressive, vociferous sin-
cerity to which an admixture of sham is unthinkable. After
all, that he should be stricken on the road to Damascus is less
astonishing than in the case of other notable modern converts,
because Papini has long invoked the truth-lightning that was
to fell him; his eagerness to destroy all the flimsy fabrics
which men have called Temples of Truth was never unac-
companied by an anxious search after a solid ubi consistam.
In a book published less than ten years ago an autobiog-
raphy, or rather a cynical confession a book entitled The
Man Who Is Through and written to show that he was not
through by any means, this passage is found: "I beg neither
for bread, nor glory, nor compassion. I ask not embraces
from women, or money from bankers, or praises from the
'intellectuals:' those things either I go without, or earn or steal
for myself. But I beg and ask for, humbly on my knees, with
all the force and passion of my soul, a crumb of certitude, one
only, one tiny, but solid, grain of faith, one atom of truth."
And again: "A skeptic? Not I unfortunately. Not even a
skeptic. A skeptic is lucky: he has one belief left the belief
that it is impossible to be sure of anything. He may be tran-
quil and, if he cares to be, dogmatic. Not I. I do not even be-
lieve that research is vain: I am not certain that certitude is
inexistent. Among things possible there is this, too: that
truth may exist and that someone may be in possession
of it."
Whether his spasmodic efforts toward truth have been re-
warded by the full light of faith may remain questionable if
one considers only his book on Christ. A "return to Christ"
is not the usual term to describe a conversion to the Catholic
Church : the expression may be sufficient, but it may also be
equivocal. However, that Papini feels a passionate love for
Christ, a devout regard for Christ's Church, decisively iden-
tified with the Catholic Church, of that no shadow of doubt
may remain in any fair-minded reader. Only now are the
intimate facts of his conversion being made known.
Of the book's formal orthodoxy we may also be sure: it
seems that it had been submitted unofficially to competent
churchmen for a preliminary revision, and anyway even the
exacting critics of the Civiltd Cattolica, the well-known Jesuit
1921.] A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST 653
organ, are friendly in their tone and do not find fault except
with certain slight verbal inaccuracies such as a layman could
hardly be expected to avoid on ground so perilous.
Yet to the orthodox and trained taste Papini's book might
not be altogether satisfactory. The mildest form of condemna-
tion on the part of the Church is to say that an author's writ-
ings "sapiunt hderesim" they smack of heresy, as it were. Not
that Papini's book has such a bitter taste, but one feels some-
thing peculiar about it, as if some accustomed condiment was
missing. I do not mean the "unction" which one might or
might not think desirable in this kind of book, because the
virility and the genuine fervor of the story more than makes
up for that, but certain correlations of the Christ with the
general plan of revealed religion are insufficiently stated, even
certain personages traditionally occupying a large space within
the circle of Jesus' life are given little attention. For instance,
St. Joseph is not even mentioned, and the Blessed Virgin only
in a couple of instances. Of course, Papini calls his book
The Story of Christ and is, therefore, entitled to leave out any-
thing that has no direct connection with the story: moreover,
he promises in his preface that he will write another book on
the Mother of Christ. No reference is made to Jesus' ancestry,
and in fact His Messianic character is adverted to only in a
passing way. We might also say that Papini insists principally
on the human side of Christ, though, of course, he does pro-
claim His Divinity; he does not ignore the theological value of
Christ as the Redeemer, but he emphasizes more His impor-
tance as a teacher; he does not brush aside the supernatural
element in Christ's life, but he puts forward the natural side.
It is, in short, a treatment of Christ without much Christology :
if the book, therefore, may be found not wholly satisfactory,
that is due to what it omits.
I fear also that in explaining the fundamentals of Christ's
doctrine, Papini is not thoroughly adequate. According to
him the expected Kingdom rests on these three principles:
brotherly love, non-resistance to violence, contempt of riches.
How Papini interprets and applies these principles will be
dwelt upon later, but in order to be fair to him, we must first
examine with what intent he set out to write his book.
Papini, a self-taught and self-made man, is also a clear-sighted
and utterly sincere self critic. His preface to the book con-
654 A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST [Aug.,
tains the best criticism of it it is like the overture of old
operas, in which the tunes to follow were faithfully summed up.
He starts out, in true Papinian fashion, annihilating all
the "Lives" of Christ written up to the present time, and if he
is hard on the "devout" authors he is even more contemptuous
of the "scientific" ones: the greatest fault with all these
authors is that nobody will read them except as a pious exer-
cise or to gather controversial material. First of all then, he
wants to write a "readable" book, a book "by a modern man
endowed with some respect for and some knowledge of art,
such as will command the attention even of those who are
hostile to Christianity." Beyond any doubt, he has succeeded
in this primary purpose : the book is not only readable, but it
is as "gripping" as any best seller. The title itself., The Story
of Christ, conveys the idea that it is a narrative without con-
troversial or pedantic excess beggage. Chapter sub-titles are
catchy as, for instance, "The Stable," "The Ox and the Ass,"
"Octavianus," "The Carpenter," "The First Four," "Turning
Things Upside Down." Each chapter is rather short there
are one hundred and twenty-nine chapters in six hundred and
twenty-eight pages which makes the story move fast and
diversifies its interest.
As Papini adheres strictly to the four Gospels, there can
be little novelty in the subject matter, but familiar scenes
stand out in a new, vivid light through his dramatic realism
and power of reconstructing in high relief a milieu that habit-
ual perception had flattened out. His style is one "of violent
contrasts and foreshortenings, enlivened with sharp and racy
locutions in order that modern souls, accustomed to the spices
of error, may be aroused by the whipcracks of truth." What
had become obvious, or was apparently commonplace, in cer-
tain events of Christ's life, acquires a new vividness, a deep
meaning in Papini's book. As his description of the Bethle-
hem stable: not a picturesque grotto, not a trim background
to a neat little crib, but a real stable in all its sordidness. Or
of the little Capharnaum synagogue in which Jesus spoke:
a powerful sketch of the different types that conceivably gath-
ered there workingmen, fishermen, farmers, small land-
owners, traveling merchants in the front ranks, then "toward
the end of the room because this synagogue is nothing but
an oblong hall, whitewashed, hardly bigger than a schoolroom
1921.] A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST 655
or a kitchen or a wine-shop squat down like dogs near the
door, fearing all the time lest they should be kicked out, the
poor folks of the town, the poorest of all, those that live of an
occasional job, of some grudged alms and possibly alas
of some petty larceny: the ragged ones, the flea-bitten ones,
the avoided ones, the disinherited."
With different emotions these people listen to the words
of Jesus; the well-to-do, the merchants, the Pharisees sniff and
wink at each other, but dare not laugh. They walk out,
serious and stiff, cautiously grumbling their disapproval; but
the wretches near the door cannot get tired of Jesus, they hang
upon His lips and still listen when He has ceased speaking.
They follow Him outside and ask Him questions out in the
open air where their courage revives. "And Jesus, halting,
answered that obscure rabble with words that will never be
forgotten." Even more lurid is the chapter, "The Den of
Thieves," describing the rout of the Temple merchants, their
disgusting religious commercialism and their almost comical
scampering away.
All is not realism in this many-faceted book: the story is
often interrupted by flights of poetry and flashes of eloquence.
For this, Papini begs forgiveness in the preface: he realizes
the callous temper of his average reader. True eloquence is
almost lost today and, in its place, we have empty oratory;
lack of strong and vital persuasions makes it incongruous to
feel strongly about anything. If Papini declaims at times
with the emphasis of the old style preacher, he does so
because inspired by the fiery zeal and the fearless sincerity
which transforms rhetorical emphasis into real eloquence.
This is particularly the case when he inveighs against those
classes of people in modern society in whom is reproduced the
spirit of the ancient enemies of Christ.
If in its literary form The Story of Christ caters to mod-
ern tastes, it is for the purpose of better supplying a remedy
to modern needs. "Every generation has its own cares, its
own thoughts, and its own madnesses. The old Gospel must
be translated again to help those who are lost. To make Christ
live at all times in the life of men, it is necessary to reawaken
Him now and then from the dead, not to color Him over with
the tints of the day, but to make clear anew, with new words
and with references to the present, His eternal truth and His
656 A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST [Aug.,
unchangeable history." We must consider which are the pas-
sions that agitate the world of today, not forgetting that Papini
has in mind the present European situation, and more spe-
cially the troubled social life of Italy. The Great War has
thrown up from its deep, bloody furrows a monstrous crop
of national hatreds, while the even more terrible spectres of
race-hatreds walk over the land. Within national life, there
is class hatred and party hatred: from all this springs the spirit
of violence: violence in order to assert one's rights, real or
fanciful, one's ideals or simply one's supposed superiority.
Violence is invoked as a remedy against violence : radicals are
up in arms, and even more radical conservatives want to over-
whelm them with more arms. At the bottom of it all, there is
an inordinate desire for wealth as the means for satisfying the
general craving for pleasure.
Papini tears the mask off leaders and masses, showing
how their so-called ideals are but a thin disguise of sodden
animalism. And it is to oppose the passions of the day that he
interprets the Kingdom of God as consisting in the principles
we enunciated above : brotherly love, non-resistance, contempt
of money.
In the chapter which illustrates the Sermon on the Mount,
Papini shows the utter contrast between the teaching of
Christ and anything that man had previously heard. "It has
been said but I tell you." What had been said before is
totally different from what He tells : the Old Testament incul-
cated the love of the Law, but the New proclaims the law of
Love. The only erudite digression in the whole book comes in
at this juncture: Papini shows conclusively how far below
Jesus are all the famed teachers of Greece and of the Orient,
of whom He is supposed to be an imitator according to that
alleged "science" whose concern it is to minimize Christ at all
costs. "The ancient world does not know Love it knows pas-
sion for woman, friendship toward a friend, justice to a citizen,
hospitality to strangers, possibly some kind of timid and class-
restricted benevolence, but not Love for one's enemies, much
less the blessing of one's torturers." This is the astonishing
novelty of the Gospel.
In expounding the doctrine of non-resistance and in his
denunciations of the use of money, the "devil's dung," as he
forcibly calls it, I fear that Papini has lost sight not only of
1921.] A NEW LIFE OF CHRIST 657
the necessary distinction between Gospel counsels and Gospel
precepts, but also of the distinction between Christianity as
practicable by the individual, and as it can be applied in or-
ganized society. This might lead to a weakening of Chris-
tianity into a dreamy Tolstoianism. One must think of the
disturbed social relations in Italy to appreciate fairly why
Papini has gone possibly a little too far in the right direc-
tion, however with his preaching of the doctrine of non-
resistance; one must remember the daily encounters between
"Fascisti" and "Communists" which, for a time, have created
in Italy a sort of intermittent and sporadic civil war; the
almost universal carrying of deadly weapons, the mob-ferocity
which has occasionally broken the shell of civilization, the
elation on the part of "good people" when "Red" out-
breaks have been smothered in blood. And as regards money,
it is only too true that money is no longer today what it was
meant to be, a necessary standard of exchange, but has be-
come a highly speculative merchandise: the world is in the
grip of Plutocracy, the real kings are the international bank-
ers who absorb wealth merely by manipulating money. And
Papini says to this money-mad world: "Bread, already sacred
upon the family table, becomes upon the church table the
eternal Body of Christ. Money is also the visible sign of a
transubstantiation. It is the Devil's infamous host. Your
coined metals are the devil's corruptible excrements. Whoso-
ever touches those metals lovingly or receives them with joy,
is in visible communion with the devil. Whosoever touches
money with a thrill, touches, unknowingly, the devil's dung."
At least a third of the book deals with the Passion of
Christ, and though that story is cut into our mind, though we
have heard it rendered in sublime poetry, visualized and im-
mortalized by masters of painting and sculpture, although it
would seem as if the mind of man, through the power of all
the arts, had drained from it all possible dramatic intensity,
Papini's rendition is yet wonderfully novel and soul-awaken-
ing. Besides the Passion of Christ one feels in his words the
passion of a great man in a vain titanic struggle to undo a
deed that's done forever, the desolation upon the stone of a
sepulchre, the exasperating battle to shake the indiffer-
ence of those who live as if unaware of their Saviour's death
and triumph. Merely in chiseling out certain small details
VOL. GXUI. 42
658 A NBW LIFE OF CHRIST [Aug.,
overlooked or ineffectually used by others, Papini gives his
readers unexpected sensations.
The greatest praise to be given to this book is, I believe,
that in closing it a reader will not simply say : What a wonder-
ful writer this Papini is but he will feel in his soul the spell
of Christ's personality, he will feel himself drawn back to
Him across the desolate ravines of the world. This is what
Papini meant to accomplish: "A book not only edificated"-
or built up according to the canons of art "but an edifying
book."
The Story closes with a prayer to Christ. I shall, in con-
cluding, quote a few lines of it: it is a heart-rending cry of
distress, an impassioned yearning for a new manifestation of
Christ which, in the excess of his love, the author dares to
hope for, even as a visible manifestation:
We pray to Thee, O Christ, we, the renegades, the guilty
ones, men born out of their time, we who still remember
Thee and struggle to live with Thee, but always too far
from Thee: we, we the last ones, without any other hope
turning back from the abysses and from the earth's ends,
we pray Thee to come once more among the men who
murdered Thee, who have not ceased murdering Thee, and
give again to us, assassins stalking in the dark, the light
of the true life.
Never as today has Thy Message been necessary, and
never as today has it been forgotten or despised. The
kingdom of satan has reached its full maturity and the
salvation of all who go about gropingly cannot be but in
Thy Kingdom.
If Thou comest not to awaken the sleepers lying in the
smelling mire of our hell, it will mean that in Thy judgment
our punishment is still too short and too light for our
betrayal. And may Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.
But we, the last ones, await Thee: we shall await Thee
every day in spite of our unworthiness and in the face of
all impossibilities. And all the love we shall be able to
press out of our devastated hearts, shall be for Thee, O
Crucified, Who wert tortured for love of us and Who now
torturest us with all the power of Thy implacable love.
IN LONELY RAVENNA.
BY JOSEPH FRANCIS WICKHAM.
LONE and mournful strand, without a sea; a fair
and saddened princess, without a realm, in a
ceaseless slumber, but alive; a grave, but a gar-
den eternal. This is Ravenna. She had the sea
once, but now it sighs and sobs six miles away;
she ruled an empire when Italy was younger by fifteen cen-
turies; she shelters twenty thousand souls today, who walk in
silence through silent streets; she has buried her ambitions,
but her achievements are everywhere, a magnificent memorial
to days of grandeur. Ravenna is a beautiful wreckage left by
a summer storm, a decaying fragment of glory, but a glory
none the less, fair even in the face of death. Her history she
gives to him who reads, but her soul's story only to him who
comes and pays court and listens to her whispered song.
What a full-fold romance it is! What a thrilling drama
must that be which has an Augustus Caesar and a Theodoric
and a Justinian and a Dante in the cast; with saints and sin-
ners passing across the stage; with battles won and battles
lost, in the action; with deeds of valor displayed, and noble
deaths; and ever in the scenes the matchless triumphs of the
arts and crafts of a peaceful day.
Ravenna is the resting-place of that supreme singer of the
Middle Ages, Dante, and a fitting place of pilgrimage in this
centenary year. His mausoleum stands near the Church of
San Francesco, in the vestibule of which the Florentine exile
was first buried. Dante's tomb was originally the work of
Pietro Lombardi, who built it in 1482 at the instance of Ber-
nardo Bembo, the representative of Venice in the city; but
now, through reconstruction, it is more modern than the sen-
timental heart would wish. The old palace of the Polenta
looks down upon the tomb from across the way, a fitting
guard for the poet's grave. For it was Guido da Polenta who
gave him the welcome of Ravenna, after Florence had for-
bidden him her shelter and had doomed him to follow the
wandering roads.
660 IN LONELY RAVENNA [Aug.,
How willingly would Florence blot that page in her chron-
icles, none but a Florentine can tell you. But it may not be
so; and Ravenna loves to tell her guests how the great Dante
came to her, with his daughter, Beatrice, how he wooed the
Muses here, and here gave to the world the entire body of his
poems. She likes to tell the story of his service to the city,
and render an account of his death that came of fever con-
tracted in that service. She has a never-fading dream of fair
women who have come to the tomb and have dropped a rose
or breathed a prayer, and have gone away all gently; she re-
calls the men who have passed this way with heads bared and
hearts aflame as some well-loved line of the Divine Comedy
flashed through the memory; Chateaubriand made his visit
here, Byron was a pilgrim, Pius IX. lingered in quiet reverie.
For in this tomb sleeps one who peered with steady eye into
the worlds beyond the day, a prophet-poet who shall not come
again.
In her buildings, Ravenna is today very much what she
was in Byzantine days. Time has destroyed much, to be sure,
but the city remains still a marvelously precious treasury of
the work of the first Christian centuries. She stands today,
a city of the marsh, the marsh that has kept many a barbarian
hand afar, and saved Ravenna to the world as the Byzantine
museum supreme.
When you begin to examine the glory of Ravenna, to fol-
low the ways that Dante trod, you most likely will turn,
whithersoever you are bent, into the Piazza Maggiore. It is in
the centre of the city, covering the palace-circled area that
once knew the Forum. Fair-sculptured capitals of the col-
umns of the colonnade will speak to you in accents of hoary
antiquity, two granite columns will be Venice's witnesses to
you that she once ruled here, and the statue of Clement XII.
will remind you that the Papal ruler was loved in Ravenna.
But, if you choose your route most wisely, you will turn your
steps to the burial chapel of Galla Placidia. This represents,
better than anything else in the city, the old Western Empire,
which moved its capital from Milan to Ravenna in the days of
Honorius.
Galla Placidia is one of the famed women of history. She
was the beautiful daughter of Theodosius the Great and his
wife, Galla, and was a sister of Honorius. She first came into
1921.] IN LONELY RAVENNA 661
prominence from the fact of being one of those taken prisoner
by Alaric after the sack of Rome. She married Ataulphus,
Alaric's brother, and his successor as King of the Visigoths.
He was murdered in 414, and Galla Placidia, after a time,
married Constantius, the successful general of her brother.
He now became associated with Honorius in the affairs of the
Empire. After the death of Constantius, Placidia, owing to a
disagreement with Honorius, withdrew with her children to
Constantinople. But when her brother died, she came back
to represent her son's rights to the throne against John, the
usurper. Successful in her efforts, she ruled the Western
Empire as regent for the weak Valentinian for a quarter of a
century. Possessed of great riches, she devoted them unspar-
ingly to the adornment of Ravenna, and when she died at
Rome in 450, her capital city on the Adriatic was a fair
memorial of her eventful life.
This chapel which she built is the earliest Byzantine
monument of art in the city. A humble brick structure in the
form of a Latin cross, the domed mausoleum does not impress
the visitor with any show of magnificence. It is within the
chapel, now known as the Church of Santi Nazario e Celso,
that the glory lies, the red and gold and blue and white of the
rare fifth century mosaics that gleam on arch and cornice and
dome. Some Eastern prince might have hung those walls
with his richest gems, to make this chapel- tomb a jewel-box
of his fancy. Beneath the dome in the church rests the tomb
of the Empress; not far away lies the tomb of her second hus-
band, Constantius; and a little distance off stands the sarcoph-
agus of their son, Valentinian III. The three are cenotaphs
now, empty memorials of those imperial Caesars. Once upon
a time the embalmed body of Galla Placidia, clad in the rai-
ment of an empress, rested within the tomb, in a seated posi-
tion on a throne of cypress. Through an aperture she could
be seen by all, until a fateful day in 1577, when some children
inserted a lighted taper and accidentally set the robes afire.
In a short time the body of the great Queen, Empress even in
death, lay in dust. Her tomb, then, is empty, these three hun-
dred years and more, but the little chapel which encloses it is
a sign to men that the daughter of Theodosius the Great once
measured out in no petty way a lifetime of achievement in the
capital city of Italy.
662 IN LONELY RAVENNA [Aug.,
A step from the mausoleum chapel of the Empress stands
the great Church of San Vitale, a magnificent structure of By-
zantine architecture, the first great specimen of that type in
Italy. An octagonal mass of brick, rugged and strong from
base to dome, is the external effect, and it is only in the in-
terior that you can find the real beauty of the masterpiece.
The eight marble-cased columns supporting the arches, the
richly-carved Byzantine-Corinthian capitals, the grand dome-
it is a fair sight for the seeker of fair things. More beautiful
than all else is the blaze of color of the mosaic-work upon the
walls. This has lasted through the centuries since the time of
Justinian, and even today is a joy in the purple and green and
blue and gold of the color-splendor.
It will not be a short visit that will give you what this
church holds; but even a brief tarrying may help you to
understand why Charlemagne chose it as the model of his
palatine chapel at Aix-la-Chapelle. When you depart, and are
on your way again, you will find much interest in the old
tomb of the Exarch Isaac, which stands in a side lane close at
hand.
The cathedral at Ravenna has little interest from the view-
point of antiquity. It was founded by Archbishop Ursus about
the year 380, but was almost completely rebuilt in 1734 by
Archbishop Guiccioli. The old round campanile still stands,
however, and the crypt is also a relic of the old days. The
low, octagonal, flat-domed structure of San Giovanni in Fonte,
which adjoins the cathedral, is very ancient, being built in 451
by Archbishop Neon. Within the dome are dazzling mosaics,
perhaps the finest in Ravenna, and certainly the oldest.
Joy, akin to the delight just experienced, awaits you in the
Chapel of the Archbishop's palace close at hand. The chapel
was built by St. Peter Chrysologus between the years 439 and
450, and has seen no change worth the mention. The mosaics
recall some of those of the Church of San Vitale, and are
similar in subject. Full beautiful to the eye is the ivory chair,
said to have been the throne of St. Maximian, with reliefs of
exquisite carving.
You have yet to behold the memorials of Theodoric, that
king who defeated Odoacer and set up the Ostrogothic state
in Italy. In his rule of thirty-three years he did much to make
the historian pause. In Ravenna Theodoric built several great
1921.] IN LONELY RAVENNA 663
churches for the Arian worship, as the king was of the heretic
fold. Of the two which remain, the more important is the
large basilica of Sant' Appolinare Nuovo, built about the year
500 as a cathedral for the Arian bishops. It originally was
called the Church of San Martino in Coelo Aureo. In 560,
after the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom, the church was con-
secrated for Catholic worship by Archbishop Agnellus. In the
ninth century the relics of Sant' Appolinare were deposited
here, and since then the church has been known by its present
name.
Not a wonderfully impressive sight is this great church, as
you approach it. It once possessed a fine atrium and an apse,
but these were removed long ago. The interior makes com-
pensation more than satisfying. The twenty-four marble col-
umns from Constantinople, with their Byzantine capitals, are
very beautiful, and the mosaics, with which Archbishop Ag-
nellus decorated the church, are fair and shining. It is inter-
esting to follow those processions above the arches of the nave ;
on the right, martyrs and confessors advancing from Ravenna
and faring toward the throned Christ; on the left, martyrs and
confessors coming from Classis and approaching the Madonna
and Child; the one group men, the other, women. And you
will find interest in the mosaic portrait of the Emperor Jus-
tinian, the bishop's throne one thousand years old, and the
marble screen, which are to be seen in the chapel wherein rest
the relics of Sant' Apollinare.
The other church which Theodoric built stands not far
away. It is called the Church of Spirito Santo now, but was
once known as the Church of San Teodoro. The columns in
the vestibule and in the nave are deserving of the admiration
they receive. Opposite the church stands the old Baptistery
of the Arians. This octagonal structure was renamed in honor
of Santa Maria in Cosmedin after it came under Catholic
jurisdiction. The sixth century mosaics of the dome were
also executed in the Catholic regime.
There are two other principal monuments of Theodoric
in Ravenna, his palace and his tomb. Naught but a remnant
of an annex is left of that imperial palace, which shared with
the fortress in Verona the days of the Gothic king. But it was
exquisitely handsome once, before Charlemagne removed its
marbles and mosaics to adorn his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle.
664 IN LONELY RAVENNA [Aug.,
In an olden day fair gardens lay about the palace, and in their
orchards the King of the Goths liked to labor. Think of him
as you will, as a wise ruler, as a cruel man, as a heretic even,
all your thoughts will inevitably lead to that space of flower-
strewn grasses without the city, where his mausoleum
stands. The tomb is, indeed, a picturesque memorial to the
genius of the Barbarian. But it doubtless would have been
shattered and ruined, even as the palace has been, but for the
characteristic wisdom of the Catholic Church in converting it
into the chapel of Santa Maria della Rotonda. The ashes of
the king were scattered to the winds when the Gothic empire
fell, but the tomb that once enshrined them will last until the
next migration of warrior hosts sweeps forward from the East.
The mausoleum is a round, two-storied structure, built in the
Roman manner, and is surmounted by a great dome, thirty-
six feet in diameter, and three feet thick, a single block of
Istrian granite. As Theodoric watched this huge monument
mold itself to art, perhaps he sometimes wondered if death
were as fair a thing as life, to be welcomed after accomplish-
ment at the end of the golden path; he must have often
thought of the fallen kings of old, those untamed kindred
chieftains lying in forgotten graves beyond the Danube shores;
and in mournful reverie his heart must have ofttimes grieved
for the wild blood's strain that lingered in his veins, an un-
lovely heritage from a barbaric race, a passion-rift in a soul
of peace.
In Ravenna you will have little desire to visit picture gal-
leries and museums; the city herself is too vast and glorious
a museum to brook any lesser rivals. Nevertheless, you will
go some day to the Accademia di Belle Arti to see the collection
of pictures which represent the Longhi family, the native
painters. Canova and Thorvaldsen will attract you with their
sculpture work, but you will pay most homage to that creation
of Tullio Lombardi, the tomb of Guidarello Guidarelli, the
Ravennese warrior. It is one of the most exquisite concep-
tions of the repose after battle ever committed to the trust of
marble. The thought of this sleeping, armor-girt knight will
follow you even into the Museo Nazionale, once the beautiful
old monastery of the Camaldulensians, where you will go to
see Luca Longhi's masterpiece of the "Marriage of Cana" and
many a memorial tomb, ancient and modern.
1921.] IN LONELY RAVENNA 665
More than one other beautiful edifice will lie in your path
as you saunter through the old city. There is the Church of
San Giovanni Evangelista, modernized in 1747, but preserving
many memorials of Galla Placidia, who built it in 424, as an
offering in thanksgiving for having been saved on a voyage
from Constantinople to Ravenna; there is the Church of San
Giovanni Battista, built in 438 by the same energetic lady for
her confessor, St. Barbatian, but rebuilt in 1683, with the ex-
ception of the round campanile and several columns; there is
the Church of Sant' Agata, which has twenty columns that look
back to the fifth century and Honorius; and two miles beyond
the Porta Alberoni, the gate built in honor of Clement XII.,
there are the stern walls of the Church of Santa Maria in
Porto Fuori, which recall the eleventh century, when the cam-
panile base was the lighthouse, it is thought, of the port of
Ravenna.
You have not seen Ravenna yet; you have not partaken of
her welcome truly; for you have still to seek that marvelous
edifice, standing lone and desolate three miles out of the Porta
Nuova, the Church of Sant' Apollinare in Classe Fuori. No
matter where else in the world you will go, no matter how
thickly you will crowd your mind with cities' faces and the
hills of peace, you will never lose the memory of that old
church and the journey to its doors the dank, dreary marsh-
land, the pestilential waters behind the dyke, the wide acres of
rice-fields, the low, shivering wastes of wild grass. The sub-
limity of grieving nature is all that is left of Classis, so full of
life in the days of Augustus, so lovely with orchards and
gardens fourteen hundred years ago. Perhaps it is in doleful
memory of those better days that the fields deck themselves in
a mantle of color in the springtime, with purple orchids and
pink tamarisk and white lilies. In this beauteous way con-
cealing the morasses beneath the blossoming glow. Over the
raised causeway you drive on, with the tears of things so elo-
quent on either side; no house is here to watch your coming,
no fragment arch of Rome, no broken tomb of broken king;
destroyed by the hand of the Lombard Luitprand, Classis lies
dead.
Still you journey forward, and then, dimly at first, but
ever more clearly, you see a tower and a cross and the broad
outlines of a church. You come closer in the solemn stillness
666 IN LONELY RAVENNA [Aug.,
of this second Roman Campagna, and in a moment you are
before that marvelous edifice, erected fourteen centuries ago,
in magnitude and beauty the foremost early Christian basilica
in existence, the Church of Sanf Apollinare in Classe.
This vast basilica, with its tall round campanile, was
commenced in the year 534 by Julianas Argentarius, when
Ursicinus was archbishop of Ravenna; it was consecrated by
Archbishop Maximian in 549; it saw Bestoration in 1779 and
again in 1904. The church is sacred to the memory of St.
Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna, and the only martyr
among all her bishops. It is thought that he suffered martyr-
dom at this spot where now the great church rests so pen-
sively on the plain.
Once upon a time a broad portico adorned the edifice, but
thk is gone now. The modern workmanship on the facade
does nothing to enhance the beauty of the church or to enrich
the visitor with associations of antiquity. To the interior
you must go to find a glory and magnificence more than
satisfying. It is a rare moment when first you look down the
long avenue between the twenty-four Corinthian columns, and
survey the aisles reaching spaciously away toward the farthest
recesses of the large basilica. That fair nave which beckons
you on, once gleamed in glittering marble and priceless mosaic,
but their empire is ended these many centuries, and along the
arches are now to be seen the portraits of the one hundred and
thirty-one bishops of Ravenna. As you read that inscription
midway along the left aisle, you call up a picture of the Em-
peror Otho III. undergoing in this church his penance of sack-
cloth and scourging, after hig wearied walk from Rome to
Monte Gargano ; the old iron days of kingly tyranny and kingly
obedience flash through your mind, and the equal justice for
peasant and prince in the long ago ages of Faith.
The mosaics along the nave are a memory; but the tribune
and the rood-arch before it still wear the mosaic jewels of the
sixth and seventh centuries. From a glowing mass of pink
and light blue clouds, within a star-set circle of blue, gleams
an exquisite cross with a half-length figure of Christ. Fair,
too, are the representation of St. Apollinaris preaching in the
meadow and the conception of the Transfiguration, Italy's
first picture, most probably, on this subject.
Rut the pavements are sinking in the ooze of the fenland;
1921.] IN LONELY RAVENNA 667
green moss would like to find a habitation on the cold marble.
With footsteps softly echoing amid the columns of the desolate
temple, you say a good-bye and go out into the sunlight.
Under the open sky the marshes wander away, far and
far, in the direction of the Apennine horizon and Ravenna's
gates lie across the moor. But not yet does the backward
pathway lead, for as your eyes fell upon the basilica on your
journey hither, they also descried a dense mass of forest rising
to the eastward. And most wisely did you guess that you
were looking at the famous Pineta, the pine woods of Ravenna,
which stand in patriarchal splendor along the Adriatic shores.
In the long ago, when Augustus was lord of the world, his
ships lay in the roadstead outside Ravenna's walls, waiting
the imperial nod. How full of wonder would Caesar be to
come back today and find all those dense pine trees swaying
as majestically as ever did Roman galleys. For it is the old
harbor that now is woodland. And always the treetops are
velvet green, a loveliness more fair to the Ravenna people on
account of the rich treasure of cones which grow in the dusky
boughs.
Dante loved to come here in the days when Polenta was
his host; here in the sun and shadow he would think the
thoughts divine that were to make the Commedia; and
in the pages of his eternal song he has left his praises of the
pine woods. It is truly a place for men to come who seek a
bower of contemplation; it is a spot for thoughts of God, and
the marvel of His ways; and you wonder if the old trees
themselves, whose fathers fought in Crusaders' ships, are
thinking, amid the voices of many winds, of the never-old
truths of the sky eternal.
You will return to the peaceful city, dreaming her dreams
in a silent sympathy. For now you know Ravenna is a thing
of beauty quite incomparable. Within her peaceful confines
the romance of a world's empire clings to her columns, the
romance of a world's poet breathes through her streets, the
romance of a world's Church chants its song along cathedral
aisles and blends its music with the murmuring of the pines.
THE RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL.
BY HELEN GUERSON.
HEN Paul Glaudel wrote the poems gathered to-
gether under the title, Corona Benignitatis Anni
Dei, he painted a gallery of sacred pictures along
the lines of mediaeval conventions, but when we
walk among them a strange thing happens. The
figures detach themselves from their golden backgrounds, and
come towards us, looking with human eyes, speaking with
voices of today, for they are timeless.
Claudel habitually sees time under conditions that lie
beyond time; and Eternity under the aspects of time, divining
it in the little happenings of every day, feeling it, with sure,
delicate perception behind and beneath what might pass for
commonplace and trifling. So he is always aware of himself
in a double role; as Pilgrim of Eternity and Child of Time.
This gives a strangely individual touch to his dealings with
such things as the incidents of the gospel story. He feels the
external beauty as an artist, dwells on it with lingering de-
light, seeing the outward circumstance with entire reality,
with a matter-of-fact simplicity, yet never for a moment loses
sight of the eternal content of the earthly happening, or of
its direct relation to himself. He might make his own version
of Francis Thompson's words, and say that for him Christ
walks upon the waters not of Geneseret, but Seine.
He shows us a pageant of events both heavenly and
earthly, a true pageant, arranged with formal state and splen-
dor, with a liturgical sense of form and due historical setting
of reality. Nor is artistry lost in reality. That is his par-
ticular faculty. Most people must choose to some extent, ac-
cording to taste or temperament, which to keep and which to
surrender. Claudel sacrifices neither.
It is characteristic of his method that he begins the volume
with the necessary personal approach. He would have us
clearly to understand that personal experience is his sole
ground for pretending to such high themes. He observes
from within, not from without. In his Sunday morning poem,
1921.] RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL 669
he very simply and quietly tells us of his own Communion,
of how he himself begins the week. That is his way of open-
ing the subject. And even here, at the very beginning, we
notice two things first, his strangely free and broad use of
French, his daring, unwonted way of handling its often re-
stricted cadences. He is not exactly the pioneer in that mat-
ter, but he develops a medium of surpassing suitability to his
purposes. Secondly, we notice how his mind is soaked in the
Divine Office, so that his words are always inclined, as if
instinctively, to run in a rhythmic and liturgical form.
He begins : "Amen. In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost. I am ready. I am here." That
is his way of introducing himself. He has no false delicacy in
the matter, or at least he has learned to conquer it. He sees
no reason why his personal relation to God should not be
clearly expressed, since it is the foundation of all that is to
come. He makes that morning hour very real to us, in its
exquisite diamond-like clearness of dew and dawn. "Sunday,
and the bell is about to sound for the first Mass" "Very
early in the morning on the first day of the week." Glaudel
has an odd, friendly way of showing us, in passing, each
swiftly moving reminiscence or impression that flits over his
mind. Now he remembers other happenings at this same hour,
and tells us of them just as they occur to him the cock-crow
and Mary Magdalen hastening to the sepulchre. There is an
extraordinary freshness and enjoyment in the sense of perfect
readiness, the preparedness of soul and body alike :
-I
My heart is free, my mouth is clean, fasting in body and mind
I stand absolved from all my sins, confessed, one by one.
A clear, clean, disciplined happiness is all about him. "What
thou doest, do quickly," comes to his mind, with an odd in-
version of its original application: "May the swift rite pro-
ceed in which I communicate with Thee, the Eternal."
There is but one thing more to say, and he says it quite
simply : "Where is Thy rest, if not in me ?"
All Glaudel is in that Sunday morning poem the liturg-
ical trend of his mind and language, his flitting, reminiscent,
sometimes seemingly inconsequent fancies, his relations to the
Ages of Faith, his insistent modernity. But, in all things, his
670 RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL [Aug.,
life and experience, as a communicant, is the groundwork of
what he feels and knows and sees and has to say. And he
would have us understand, from the very beginning, that he
will write from within and not as a mere spectator. One
must reiterate that.
His year of God begins with the Dawning of the Epiphany
star. With the Three Kings he enters the stable, not exactly
in their train, but together with them, not changed from his
normal self, but there, as he lives, bringing, in his person, the
modern world to the Crib. The perception of the seemly ar-
tistic convention extends to all he sees, but he himself, the ob-
server, stands apart from it, within the picture yet uncon-
formed to it, and appreciating its strangeness and beauty all
the better for that. As the folk of mediaeval times desired to
be placed with their families in the foreground of sacred pic-
tures painted to their order, and may be seen there rubbing
shoulders with haloed saints and winged angels even so
Glaudel takes us into the picture with him, as if he and we
had a right to be there.
He looks at the scene, eagerly, joyfully, thoughtfully.
Here are Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. They are not the
first comers to be sure. He notes that and sees at once why
the Shepherds should have been beforehand with them. It
was so much easier to find shepherds fit for the purpose than
kings :
They are poor, so poor, the good God has no trouble in finding
them,
So His Son, when He comes, finds Himself at home with them.
But as for learned men and kings, ah, that is a quest far different :
To find among such even three worthy, God searched the whole
world.
He seems to congratulate them. Here they are, after all, and
only twelve days late, when all is said and done! Considering
how rich they are, it is even something of a miracle. He looks
at their gifts, and that odd, freakish imagination of his flies
off to fancy how they were brought:
By means of a thousand chariots and two hundred and
eighty camels,
Passing in single file and all through the eye of a needle.
1921.] RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL 671
Then he passes on, as the Sundays after Epiphany do, to other
Manifestations: The Baptism in Jordan, and notes, with sud-
den exultation, that:
From the last wee well in the desert, to the chance pool by the
wayside
There is now no drop of water but suffices to make a Christian.
Some strange, characteristic, vivid perception comes to him
with each new act of contemplation. He stands by at Cana,
and sees the water made wine :
'Tis well and that Thou hast given, we will give Thee back in
due season.
Wilt Thou then say 'tis the best, the best we have kept to the last,
The best on a filthy sponge, swollen with dregs and with bitter
A gift, of one who holds office, to show the excess of his zeal.
The thought smites the scene into a terrible reality for us.
"Mine hour is not yet come" but when it comes, that is what
will happen.
Then Claudel passes on to the Presentation linking it
in his imaginative conception with the early Mass of some still
winter's morning. He sees Our Lady moving in the light of
the early dawn, where towards sunrising the cold, snow-laden
winter sky shows one ray couleur de citron. He shows us
the cold, empty temple courts, where the simple ceremony is
hastened through, almost unnoticed in the morning dimness,
save by those most immediately concerned. And in sharp
contrast comes a glimpse of the morning world of Jerusalem,
waking to its business and its pleasure. We hear the world
voices that hardly trouble to discuss the hope of a Messiah
nowadays: "It is more interesting to read the news and play
politics against the Romans." So, he notes, half realized by
less than half-a-dozen people, the transmission of powers is
made between the Synagogue and the Church.
He wanders on from point to point through the pageant
of the Church's year when he sings a Pentecostal hymn, he
is less absorbed with the outward event than with its con-
tinuing, endless consequences. He sees the generations enter-
ing the upper chamber in long procession, one succeeding to
another :
672 RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL [Aug.,
Like an advancing army whose front line emerges in sunshine,
Our generation, in turn, will enter the Plenary Grace.
An overwhelming sense of wealth and profusion comes upon
him with the thought of that grace, of its abounding and
overflowing and an act of divine hope rises in his heart-
hope for the whole world : "Who, seeing all the evil, yet know
that Thy grace will prevail!"
The poem for Corpus Ghristi begins with thoughts of the
book of Ruth. It is really a country idyll, sounds and scents
of the summer and the fruitful season and the ripening corn,
are all about it: broad stretches of the golden harvests ready
for the sickle are before our eyes. And then he turns from
the outward to the inward:
Give us io cat oh, Rich Man and Lord of the Harvest,
Welcome for ever the wanderer into Thine House of Rread.
He falls instinctively into the phraseology of the Liturgy, now
turning it to his purposes, and now led by it, while his thoughts
go wandering here and there through the riches of that House
of Bread. Sometimes he takes up one of its treasures as if to
examine it in detail, then puts it down, to let himself wonder
and be awed by the greatness of the whole. He remembers,
as it were the wisdom of the Kings and the simplicity of the
Shepherds, and tries to lay both down as his tribute. Now, as
simply as a child, he enumerates those for whom he would
pray, "my wife, my two children, and those whom I have
wronged;" again his mind turns to all the world-wide symbol-
ism, every broken light men's eyes have discerned, in thoughts
of worship and sacrifice, to find completeness and fulfillment
in the Mystery of the Mass. Now he is delighting in the out-
ward beauty, the aesthetic satisfaction that is there before the
artist's eyes, then pausing to feel the mystery beneath, and to
rest upon the thought that both are his in their fullness. If
he beats himself for a moment against the mystery, very
humanly it is to fall back, with a sigh of relief, upon the
Promise :
Thou, Thyself, Thou hast said it; that I of Thy Flesh may
partake,
Thine is the written word, never mine so strange an invention
1921.] RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL 673
Why should I doubt for an instant, when clear stands the word
of the promise?
Thou, Thou alone, oh! my God (since I have had naught with
the doing)
Must answer for this enormity.
In the poem for the Visitation a remarkable restraint
makes itself felt. It is always present with Claudel when he
writes of Our Lady a reverence that brings something of
timidity into his manner. He hardly ventures a word of
eulogy or even of description. He glances timidly up, and then
says in the simplest words what he has seen so swiftly. He
brings us into the little garden of Zacharias, and speaks as if
he had stood by and watched. First the calm, self-restrained
greeting between the two women, and then how fixedly Eliza-
beth looks at Mary :
She beholds her and sighs says, "Ah!" and bows down her head,
Comprehending all at a glance.
He sees her tears, the difficult tears of old age. And beneath,
and through, the little commonplace things he sees the eternal
values :
Elizabeth, oh! most blessed, sees Mary make the first Station;
Sees God's eternal wisdom reciting the song, Magnificat.
ClaudePs series of poems on the Apostles have a certain
friendliness, so to speak, and a freshness of approach. It is
as if he visited each in turn and took away a vivid personal
impression. He finds St. Matthew, for instance, writing his
Gospel, doing it rather laboriously, and with a large, clear sim-
plicity not concerned to explain or reconcile, but simply to
tell things as he knows them:
For the lifting of hearts that are simple, and the downfall of
those that are not,
And the rage (so grateful to Heaven) of pedants and renegade
priests.
The saints of whom he writes are treated very simply,
affectionately, and with the respectful familiarity of one who
has a small place in the same household and employment.
In writing of St. Benedict, he thinks chiefly of the immense
simplification of life to the religious:
VOL. cxiii. 43
674 RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL [Aug.,
Tis well to come back to God, but better not to have left Him,
And why the fret and the torment because of the things of the
earth,
So simple it is to have nothing.
He sees St. Francis Xavier setting forth in the steps of Alex-
ander the Great, towards the mysterious East, with its beauty
and its terror; and sees him again at the end, his course
finished :
Not even shoes to his feet, and his flesh more worn than his
cassock.
L' Enfant Jesus de Prague is a wonderful little child
poem. Outside are the winter cold and the snow, within the
children are sleeping, safe and warm, their toys at hand, laid
ready for the first waking moment. The red glow of the
dying embers on the hearth gives just light enough to show
the quaint little image that watches over the small beds : "The
Infant Jesus watches over His little brothers till dawn."
The companion poem to that is the address to St. Nicholas,
"the powerful bishop of Myra," who carries in his bag every-
thing a child can wish for. The song for the feast of St. Louis
of France has two lines that give the keynote to much of
Claudel's thinking:
Why should I think of myself, of that which I lack or I look for,
When God is here, above self, matter for thought beyond compeer.
In coming into the household of Faith, Glaudel has entered
a world of interest and adventure that, if one may say so
"intrigues" him to the highest degree, that rouses his whole
capacity, and makes him live at the highest tension. Every
line he writes conveys this the sense of the intense Merest
of religion for him and his ultimate conviction stands firm
that "sadness is of the moment, joy superior and final." This
feeling is present with him even when he thinks of his sins.
There is an extraordinary exhilaration in his reflections for
the "Jour des Cadeaux." In fancy, he sees himself on his
deathbed. Thinking of his last confession and of what he will
have to bring to God, he makes a discovery :
I am rich, though of good I show little, of evil at least there is
plenty,
Not a day have I lost in preparjnjg, Lord, matter for pardon.
1921.] RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL 675
He sees himself:
A man of shut heart and of visage severe and forbidding,
Yet Thou earnest not for the just, but to save even such as this
sinner.
And so even with the thought of his sins upon him, he feels the
joy of being a redeemed sinner. A day of gifts and surely
even such a one must have something prepared for God? As
for its worthiness to be offered ! With one of the quick revul-
sions of feeling, the flashes of humor, that make his work so
curiously intimate, Paul Glaudel bethinks him, in a mood be-
tween tears and laughter, of the birthday present his own little
daughter had brought to him last year. He tells us how "her
heart swelling with pride and timidity," she came to offer him
a little duck, a pincushion she had made of red flannel and
yellow thread, and her father had not been severely critical
of that gift.
Yet sin and its consequences are no trifling things in
Glaudel's eyes. Heine's easy notion of God's forgiveness,
"that's His business," is quite alien to his mind. Read his
poems for All Souls' Day, "Commemoration des Fideles Tre-
passes" He lives through it in imagination, that strange day,
the first of November, which begins a double of the first class
in festal white, and changes at evening to signs of mourning,
as the thought of the Church passes on to consider death and
the departed.
The poet is alone now. The rain is pouring down, out-
side is the darkness, and a chill damp that strikes cold to the
very bones. Paul Claudel is reading the Office of the Dead
as others will do for him some day. We seem to feel the
mortal chill creeping over us, to taste the damp fog as we
read in the glimmering light. The horror of intense dark-
ness is very near out there where the death bells are ringing.
An awful thought comes close to him, out of the darkness, and
looks him in the face for a moment despite his hope, hell may
be for him! So those terrible lectures from Job pass by,
sounding it in his ears : " 'Gome let us reason together,' saith
the Lord," and Glaudel feels that there is only one termination
to that argument. "Against Thee only have I sinned and done
evil in Thy sight that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying
676 RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL [Aug.,
and clear when Thou art judged." The mortal has no defence.
And then through the darkness comes a thought of hope:
There is but one thing, oh! God, more than even Thou canst
accomplish,
Thou canst not hinder my loving.
Though Thou shouldst sentence to hell, I still would proclaim
Thee the highest.
And even in the cold and the darkness, the ending of the
Office brings its message. For himself and for the souls in
Purgatory, Claudel knows the Redeemer liveth.
But outside it is as dark as ever, and he can hear the
sirens of the steamers in the harbor "coughing and calling in
the fog."
Fourteen short poems on the Stations of the Cross are
at the end of the volume. It is not very easy to speak of them,
for they amount to a spiritual experience for the reader. They
record not an historical commemoration, but a present trans-
action. In them we are led to see the Passion not as if in the
past, but in the present, in the hearts and souls of living Chris-
tians, in the midst of the world as we know it, of its faith and
its doubts its observation or its indifference, its business and
its idleness. The note is struck at the very outset.
'Tis done. We have judged our God. To death we choose to
condemn Him.
Away, away with the Christ! No more the restraint of His
presence.
Crucify Him, if you will, rid us at least of this burden Away
with Him!
That first Station is given, as it were, altogether in the
present day. In the second, the voice comes from afar, and the
speaker sees with eyes of compassion (in the full meaning of
that word) :
Ah! but the Cross is high, how huge it is and how heavy!
Most heavy, most rigid, most hard and weighted with needless
sin.
Tedious it is to carry, step by step to the death.
Wilt Thou carry it even alone, oh! Jesus, my Saviour and Lord?
In the Station of the first fall comes suddenly, startlingly,
1921.] RELIGIOUS POETRY OF PAUL CLAUDEL 677
the terrible question : "How does it feel, that earth Thou hast
made?"
In the Fourth we contemplate Mary completing that sub-
mission which began when she said her "Ecce ancilla Domini."
And something in the awed, breathless reverence and utter
simplicity of the approach to her helps us to realize a little of
what that acceptance means. From the gracious action of St.
Veronica, this modern soul who has sometimes, perhaps, found
it hard to brave "human respect," makes an almost quaintly
simple and practical deduction as to the need to disregard
public opinion and accept ridicule. Not a very heroic diffi-
culty of the spiritual life, yet sometimes a very real one. And
growing out of that, is the prayer of the Seventh Station:
"Save us from the second fall, that comes from yielding to
ennui" the little foxes that spoil the grapes.
With the Ninth Station comes a strange note of triumph:
"Jesus falls a third time, but on the summit of Calvary."
The Tenth Station brings an overpowering sense of hor-
ror. The darkness closes in, as it must have done upon the
watchers, and Claudel sees, not only the Jews and the Romans
busied about the cross in the dimness, but much that has hap-
pened since "the slap of Annas' servant, the kiss of Renan."
And then comes a poignant, vivid apprehension of the mean-
ing of it all, and by ttiat unspeakable humiliation Paul Glaudel
prays for those on whom life bears hardest, and prays with
faith.
The next Station means just one thing this God pin-
ioned to the Cross is all sufficient for him. When the worst
is over "the Passion ends and the compassion continues."
When Mary, and in her person the Church, received the Sacred
Body: "Here ends the Cross, and the Tabernacle begins."
And ending the volume as he began, Claudel, in the last Sta-
tion of the Cross, sees the Passion resolving itself, so to speak,
into the mystery of the Mass and the act of Communion.
Bew Books.
TRENT. By Frederick J. Kinsman. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. $1.10 net.
We recommend most highly these four lectures on the Council
of Trent delivered by Dr. Kinsman at St. Mary's Seminary, Balti-
more, last year. He says rightly that the greatest event in Cath-
olic history for the past five hundred years was the Council of
Trent. It marked the culmination of mediaeval and the begin-
nings of modern Catholicism. The first lecture discusses the
Council in general the reason of its convocation, the choice of a
place of meeting, the interference of scheming politicians, the at-
titude of its prelates towards Papal prerogatives, its results in doc-
trinal and disciplinary decrees. The second lecture treats of the
character and tendency of the Protestant Reformation which the
Council was summoned to confront. After a brief description of
the three phases of the sixteenth century revolt in Germany,
Switzerland and England, the author shows clearly that the attack
upon the Church was based on three things: restiveness at spir-
itual authority, restiveness at the demands of asceticism, and
restiveness at the supernatural. The third lecture deals with the
significance of Trent from the viewpoint of reform, education,
doctrine, government and the Church. Its one hundred and fifty-
four decrees of reformation aimed at the selection of fit men for
the priesthood, enjoined episcopal visitations, strictness in ad-
mitting to Orders, care for preaching, fair ecclesiastical trials, and
the holding of synods, while it forbade the non-residence of pas-
tors, pluralities, the abuse of patronage and of dispensations and
simony.
The Council of Trent may also be said to have launched the
whole modern movement for Catholic schools. It affirmed every
doctrine that had been assailed by Protestants, and condemned
their errors. It exalted the authority of Peter's See, the symbol
and instrument of Church unity, and taught clearly that the exist-
ing hierarchy was the extension of the apostolate instituted by
Christ. It was finally the Council of the Church principle. All
its insistence on continuity, intellectual and social, bore witness
to continuity in the Church, to the truth of Our Lord's promise
to be with His Church and sustain it to the end. The fourth lec-
ture speaks of the practical lessons to be learned from the attitude
of the Council. This was determined by three things: uncom-
1921.] NEW BOOKS 679
promising loyalty to Catholic truth, discriminating treatment of
those in error, and the tactful preservation of Catholic unity.
Dr. Kinsman concludes with a kindly word for the outside
brethren, whom he knew so intimately in his years of experience
as Protestant Bishop of Delaware. He says: "Among non-Cath-
olics the number who really understand what the Church is and
hate her, is comparatively small. In some cases aloofness and op-
position are due to ignorance. ... In the great majority of cases,
people outside the Church, with all sorts of queer notions about
her, are not at heart opposed. Ignorance and separation are due
to no fault of their own, but are the handicap of heredity and
environment. It is easy to condemn those who are responsible
for the divisions of Christendom, not those who have merely in-
herited them. The former are criminals, the latter their victims."
THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT. A Commentary by the Right
Rev. Dom Paul Delatte, Abbot of Solesmes. Translated by
Dom Justin McCann, Monk of Ampleforth. New York: Ben-
ziger Brothers. $7.00.
Ruskin, in a gorgeous passage, bids us note the dates A. D.
421 and 481, the beginning of Venice and the crowning of Clovis.
He then adds: "Not for dark Rialto's dukedom, nor for fair
France's kingdom only, are these two years to be remembered of
all others in the wild fifth century, but because they are also the
birth years of a great lady, and a still greater lord of all future
Christendom, St. Genevieve and St. Benedict." The saint destined
to such grandeur spent his youth and early manhood in Rome,
where his father seems to have held a high position. In the
early twenties he determined to quit the world and serve God as
a monk. Monasticism in Europe was yet in its early dawn, and
St. Benedict had to depend mainly on his own initiative in devis-
ing the most potent and suitable means to realize his sublime
ideal. For a time, he apparently led an almost solitary life, living
like a hermit in a cavern, and dependent on a kind neighbor for
his food. For a time, he presided as head over several small com-
munities living near one another. For a time, he acted as chief of
a monastery of whose inmates he heartily disapproved, and from
whom he departed as soon as possible. These different experi-
ments, so to speak, of the religious life prepared and trained the
saint for the work of his noble career. When, then, he had
reached full maturity; when long meditation and experience of
men and of things had ripened his faculties, and shown him what
could be expected and what could not be expected of human
nature, he drew up his Rule for his followers. This Rule has been
680 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
observed in the Church for the past fourteen centuries. It has
produced the most marvelous fruits of scholarship, self-sacrifice
and eminent sanctity. Even by the fourteenth century the Bene-
dictine Order had given to the Church 24 Popes, 200 cardinals,
7,000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, and over 1,500 canonized
saints. A rule of life, whose influence and success was so pro-
digious deserved patient study, and within recent decades it has
been investigated scientifically and critically by many scholars,
with a view to determining its exact prevenance, and the debt of
the legislator to his predecessors. The late Ludvig Traube, who
was not even a Catholic, acquired a competence and reputa-
tion in this field somewhat similar to that enjoyed by Paul
Sabatier in Franciscan studies. In 1912, Dom Cuthbert Butler,
the learned abbot of Downside, published his Manual, where in
the short compass of two hundred "pages the Rule is edited with
lavish scholarship and acute critical insight as well. A later work
by the same author, Benedictine Monachism (1919), traces the
development of the monastic ideal during the Middle Ages.
The object of the present work is different. The abbot of
Solesmes is instructing his novices in their Rule, and commenting
its text for their edification. Its brief and pregnant sentences are
developed by him at length, and their hidden wealth laid bare.
He shows how fitly the injunctions of the sixth century apply to
the twentieth; that human nature in its fickleness, feebleness,
abasement, and superb self-victory and achievement is ever the
same through the shifting ages, a-nd the varied trappings of race
and location; that the holy Rule, inspired by religious genius and
the love of God, is able to bring out the very best in those who
obey it. The abbot's main object is thus not scholarship, and
consequently he uses just so much historical criteria and investi-
gation as are sufficient to make his pupils understand and value
the text of their Founder. Still he points out in long footnotes
scripturistic and patristic parallels, and here and there he notes
in passing a classical reminiscence. It is a wise and cultured
lecturer, who is speaking with a wide knowledge of books and an
extensive acquaintance with human nature as well. He delivers
with sympathy, insight, deft illustration and an occasional gleam
of humor his weighty and austere lessons. He insists more than
once that the aim of the true Benedictine is not learning, or build-
ing, or prominence in the outside world, but the service of God to
Whom he has vowed his life in the seclusion of the cloister. The
primary object of this volume being edification, it will be found
most useful as a book for spiritual reading. But its range does
not end there. The student of history and even of theology can
1921.] NEW BOOKS 681
learn much from a careful perusal of its pages. The English
translation is uniformly good. Here and there one meets a collo-
quialism, which startles, coming as it does, from such reverend
lips and in such a very grave subject.
DOMICILE AND QUASI-DOMICILE. By Rev. Neil Farren, D.C.L.
Dublin: M. H. Gill & Co. 8 s. 6 d.
This essay was presented by Father Farren to the Faculty
of Canon Law in Maynooth as a thesis for the degree of Doctor.
It is most essential for a proper grasp of many of the most prac-
tical portions of Canon Law to become perfectly acquainted with
the conditions under which domicile and quasi-domicile are ac-
quired and lost. Its influence in subjecting one to local laws and
superiors is almost exclusive. It is also most important in deter-
mining judicial competence, in deciding questions of administer-
ing and receiving the Sacraments, and of funeral and other offer-
ings. The new Code furnishes us merely the general principles.
For details one must follow the directions of Canon 6, and have
recourse to the old discipline and the decisions of the various
Roman tribunals.
Dr. Farren devotes most of his treatise to the practical details
of the question of domicile, but he does not fail to discuss briefly
its origin and history. He tells us what domicile meant in Roman
Law, how it was acquired, and what were its effects. He then
traces its adoption by the Canon Law, and gives a brief sketch
of its development up to the present time. Quasi-domicile, he
shows, originated in the Tametsi decree of the Council of Trent,
and its status was finally determined by the Holy Office in 1867.
THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS. By Joyce Kilmer. New
York: George H. Doran Co. $2.50.
That large section of the reading public which has found a
place in its heart for the brilliant young soldier- journalist, who
met his death in France, will thank Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday
for supplementing the two original volumes of Kilmer's works
with this collection of clever essays. Some of them are light
"screeds," while others comprise criticisms and lectures on liter-
ature.
In the first group are many bright and charming things
about "noon-day adventuring" which those lucky people expe-
rience who bolt their luncheon in six minutes and spend the rest
of their luncheon hour peering into shop windows or delving into
bookshops; or about daily travel, in which we learn of the de-
lights of commuting: "The 7:57 takes away and the 5:24 brings
682 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
back these recurrent separations and reunions are not without
their ethical and emotional value;" about the day after Christ-
mas, when hilarity and disappointment have become fused into
a calm contentment.
One of the cleverest bits of irony in the volume is "The Aboli-
tion of Poets." Poetry, we are assured, will one day be manu-
factured by means of a "jenny" and turned out ready-made by a
certain corporation of oleaginous repute. "Then after some
twenty-five years there will come a reaction, a sort of craftsman's
back-to-nature movement. Some adventurous person will make
up a real poem of his own and his friends will say, 'How quaint!
That's the way they did it in the old days before the poem-jenny
was invented. I rather like this poem. It has strength, sim-
plicity, a primitive quality that I cannot find in the poems the
Standard Oil Company sends up every week. Go on, Rollo, see if
you can make another one.' Thus encouraged, Rollo will make
another poem, and another, and rather histrionically will assume
the picturesque, old title of 'poet.' '
It is unfortunate that Joyce Kilmer did not live to give us
more literary criticism, for he had the keenness, the appreciation,
and the all-too-rare gift of sanity which criticism demands. Read
his excoriation in "The Bear That Walks Like a Man" of those
prurient poseurs who laud every Russian whose work is tainted
with decadence. His critique of Gilbert Chesterton is delightful;
his observation that William Vaughn Moody desired, though a
Puritan, to be considered a pagan, is insight itself. What he says
of Francis Thompson deserves to be printed with that poet's work.
Joyce Kilmer, though dead, will live as a true knight enlisted
in the high service of all that is genuinely true and beautiful in
literature.
EARLY HISTORY OF SINGING. By W. J. Henderson. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50.
In this well written manual, Mr. Henderson has traced the
development of the modern art of singing from the beginning of
the Christian era to the time of Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725).
He has treated of vocal forms only to the extent requisite to make
clear the character of the technique and the style of each period.
His aim throughout has been to show what singers were ex-
pected to do, and how they prepared themselves for the singing of
the music placed before them.
In a dozen interesting chapters, the author treats of the an-
tiphonal singing of the fourth century, the Schola Cantorum of
Pope Gregory I. (590), the music of the eleventh and twelfth
1921.] NEW BOOKS 683
century troubadours, the beginnings of polyphonic composition,
the art of descant, the approach of the monodic style in the
Florence of the sixteenth century, the beginnings of dramatic
recitative, and the origins of the modern Italian opera.
PRIMITIVE SOCIETY. By Edwin Sydney Hartland. London:
Methuen & Co.
Those familiar with the earlier works of Dr. E. S. Hartland
will expect and will find in this new volume much erudite knowl-
edge conveyed in a pleasant and readable form. He opens the
subject with some wise and much needed words as to caution, and
makes the very important observation that "in one thing only"
were all the speculations of all early writers, philosophers, poets
and others as to the first condition of mankind agreed, namely
that "mankind started on its tragic career in happiness and inno-
cence until corrupted by some external influence which plunged
the race into a succession of misfortunes, sorrows and struggles
in which it has been entangled down to the present hour." When
Sir Henry Maine wrote his classical work on Ancient Law, in
1861, he laid down as a primary law the Patriarchial Principle,
i. e., the sovereign rule in the family of the father, the P atria
Potestas, the Paternal Power of Early Roman Law. In the same
year Bachofen, a Swiss lawyer, put forward in his book, Das
Mutterrect, the diametrically opposed view that the earliest form
of family rule was that of the mother; starting from the account
which Herodutus gave of the Lycians. McLellan, in his article on
"Law" in the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
adopted an identical view, though unaware of his predecessor's
book, and Lubbock and Morgan and others followed in his foot-
steps. McLellan held that the earliest condition was one of com-
plete sexual promiscuity, on which, be it observed, Dr. Hartland
remarks that "absolute promiscuity, we find nowhere in human
society," adding wisely: "It is of little use to speculate upon be-
ginnings of which we possess no records."
As a fact extreme severity in sexual matters is perhaps the
more common condition amongst primtive races so-called. The
last words must always be borne in mind, for in fact we do not
at all know whether such people as the Aruntas of Central Aus-
tralia are in the condition in which early man actually existed, or
have sunk from a higher position to their present state by a slow
process of degradation. It is the problem of the Kitchen-Midden
people of prehistory over again.
To this warning as to a possible cause of error, must be added
another, namely, the extreme difficulty of getting at the actual
684 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
facts in connection with the customs and beliefs of savage and
highly suspicious races. Thus, with regard to the Polynesians, it
has been asserted by some that marriages with near relatives
excite the same horror as they do with us; and by others that
they are not infrequent.
Dr. Hartland rapidly reviews the customs of a vast number
of races in all parts of the world and, as far as possible, at all
periods of time, and finally concludes that "from all we know, the
earliest kinship to be recognized was that of mother and child."
The father was not recognized, and Mother-Right was the conse-
quence. Those who would make themselves acquainted with the
facts upon which this conclusion is based, may be referred to the
pages of this interesting book.
EMERSON. HOW TO KNOW HIM. By Samuel McChord
Crothers. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $2.00.
"The only way to know Emerson,' 1 says Mr. Crothers, "is to
join him in his intellectual exercises. In spite of his personal
aloofness, I know of no one with whom we can more readily come
into a feeling of intellectual intimacy. He had no pretensions
and no reserves. In clear sentences, he told us what from time to
time he thought. He made no attempt to connect these thoughts
into a coherent system. For any one else to do this would be to
misinterpret him."
In a score of chapters Mr. Crothers says little or nothing
about Emerson's Puritan ancestry, his college days at Harvard,
his brief career as Unitarian minister, his travels abroad, his lec-
turing tours in the United States and England, or his interest in
Transcendental philosophy, but he quotes passage after passage
from his essays and his poems to bring out clearly the character
of the man and his place in American literature.
A Unitarian minister himself, our author praises Emerson's
"discriminating" optimism, his rejection of all Christian dogma-
tism, and his vague pantheistic philosophy of the Over-Soul. He
tells us that Emerson "was not a poet in the sense of a maker of
mighty harmonies, but a poet in the sense of being a perceiver
and dear lover of natural harmonies." He says again that Emer-
son never tried to enforce the gospel of liberalism as did his
friend, Theodore Parker, but was content to express his views as
a perpetual seeker after truth. His message was: "Here is the
truth as I see it. Now investigate it for yourselves, and see what
you think of it." He never realized how St. Paul denounced those
who are always seeking after truth and never attaining it.
His optimism was like his philosophy too vague to be of
1921.] NEW BOOKS 685
any great help to his hearers or readers. Charles Elliott Norton
was not too severe when he said: "His optimism becomes a
bigotry. . . . To him this is the best of all possible worlds and
the best of all possible times. He refuses to believe in disorder
and evil. . . . Such inveterate and persistent optimism is a dan-
gerous doctrine for a people. ... It degenerates into fatalistic
indifference to moral considerations, and to personal responsibil-
ities; it is at the root of much of the irrational sentimentalism in
our American politics, of much of our national disregard of honor
in our public men, of much of our unwillingness to accept hard
truths, of much of the common tendency to disregard the distinc-
tions between right and wrong, and to excuse guilt on the plea of
good intentions and good nature."
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT. Essays
Arranged and Edited by F. S. Marvin. New York: Oxford
University Press. $6.25.
This volume consists of a number of lectures delivered at a
Summer School in England in August, 1919. It is the third of a
series. The first, in 1915, dealt with "The Unity of Western
Civilization" generally; the second, in 1916, with "Progress and
History." 'Here the attempt is made "to trace the same ideas in
the last period of European history, broadly speaking, since 1870."
The editor begins with a general survey of the significance of the
contemporary period, and then gives place to Professor A. E.
Taylor who discusses critically the development of recent philos-
ophy from William James and Karl Pearson to Bertrand Russell
and Varisco. F. B. Jevons next deals with the Evolution of Re-
ligion and discusses the work of Robertson Smith, Sir J. G. Frazer,
and Loisy. This essay no Catholic will read with assent. Pro-
fessor Herford then treats of Recent Tendencies in European
Poetry the finest contribution in the book and, indeed, well
worth the price asked for the whole work. G. P. Gooch surveys
brilliantly the results of recent Historical Research, but is unduly
respectful to the work of Henry Charles Lea, "whose volumes on
Sacerdotal Celibacy constitute a formidable indictment of me-
diaeval Catholicism." Yet, one must add, he does not withhold
high praise from the work of Janssen and Pastor. Upon Political
Theory, Economic Development, Atomic Theories, and Biology
since Darwin, Professors Lindsay, Fay, Bragg, and Doncaster,
respectively, contribute clear and interesting papers. A. Glutton
Brock writes attractively upon the appreciation of Art; Dr.
Walker is a scholarly critic of recent music, and F. M. Stawell
brings the work to an end with an essay upon The Modern Ren-
686 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
ascence. It would, of course, need a corps of specialists to re-
view satisfactorily a book of this kind, but the instructed Catholic
lay reader will constantly, during his perusal of it, meet state-
ments which he cannot accept, and views against which his re-
ligious instincts will revolt. Particularly is this true of the papers
on the Evolution of Religion and on The Modern Renascence.
In the latter, for example, we come with a sad wonder upon this
unequivocal declaration: "We, too, can never return to the Fran-
ciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as the highest life
for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except as the
means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would
call the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the
world for our own, the tree with the knowledge of good and evil
included, reacting even from the Christian ideals if they can make
no room for that. (Our italics.)" And bearing this asseveration
in mind, it stirs one to surprise to read, two or three pages later,
that "the modern dislike of churchgoing, the modern incapacity
to write a long coherent poem, the modern passion for music and
for realism, even for sordid realism, all sprang from the same
roots, from the thirst for an infinite harmony, the belief that
everything was somehow involved in that harmony, and the con-
viction that all systems as yet made or makeable, were entirely
inadequate." How much longer must the unhappy heart of man
remain unvisited by the peace that comes from a Catholic outlook?
ESSAYS SPECULATIVE AND POLITICAL. By Arthur James
Balfour. New York: George H. Doran Co. $3.00 net.
The ten papers here reprinted were all written originally for
particular occasions anywhere within the last three decades, but,
dealing with general principles as they usually do, they are not
devoid of timeliness. They are equally divided between what
may, for lack of terms less loose, be styled philosophy and pol-
itics. The first of the speculative essays is perhaps the best,
because the most concrete; entitled "Decadence," it is an essay
in the philosophy of history, an examination into the causes of
the decline and fall of the great civilizations of the past, notably
of Rome, and an optimistic appraisal of the chances Western
civilization has to escape, or at least to defer indefinitely, a
similar fate. The Romanes lecture at Oxford in 1909, on the
analysis of the idea of the beautiful, a review of Bergson's Crea-
tive Evolution, a eulogy of Francis Bacon, and the Presidential
Address for 1894 to the Society for Psychical Research, complete
the philosophical section.
Four of the five political essays deal with the War : the fifth
1921.] NEW BOOKS 687
is a brief sympathetic appreciation of the Zionist movement.
The first, on Anglo-German relations, was written two years be-
fore the War for publication in a German periodical, and is of
more than passing interest in the light of subsequent events.
It belongs, however, to journalism rather than to literature,
and lacks that note of deep sincerity, to which we must do honor
even though we disagree, which is so marked in the philosophical
essays. He is surer of himself, however, in the political field, and
speaks more as one having authority, whereas, in his philosophy,
he seems conscious of the inadequacy of his principles, and hence
his conclusions are all provisional. But, unsound as may be his
metaphysics, no one can escape the feeling, after reading these
essays, that he has been for a passing hour in the company of a
gentleman and a scholar.
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE PICTURE. Taken Down by Nancy
Dearwer. New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.25.
LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN. Written Down by Elsa
Barker. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.00.
LAST LETTERS FROM THE LIVING DEAD MAN. Written
Down by Elsa Barker. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.00.
These three books, written down by automatic script, purport
to have for their real authors men who have already "passed
over." There is no evidence in any of them to uphold their al-
leged spirit-origin. On the contrary, there is every reason to
believe from internal evidence that their true authors are still
"on this side." That a learned judge, as alleged, could be guilty
of the Letters from a Living Dead Man, either in matter or form,
is beyond human probability or credulity. The femininity of all
three effusions is so marked as to preclude any possibility of
masculine authorship even "on the other side."
The subject matter of the Letters not only gives one the im-
pression that a very mundane person originated them, but it is
difficult to escape the conclusion that the author not only was not
semi-conscious during the automatic writing, but was very wide
awake most of the time.
The intrusion of British propaganda on page 172 in the Last
Letters, settles the case of earthly authorship, unless we are to
believe that the insidious power of Britain has enlisted the good
offices even of the "spirits" on behalf of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.
The latest turn in American foreign policy bids fair to give the
lie to the prophecies contained in the Letters from a Living Dead
Man. If man is in reality "part rational, part irrational," the
reading of many such books would leave him wholly irrational.
688 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
IRISH CATHOLIC GENESIS OF LOWELL. By George F.
O'Dwyer of the American Irish Historical Society, Lowell.
Mr. O'Dwyer's brochure offers a valuable account of Irish
beginnings in Lowell, Mass., from 1822 to about 1845. Such
local studies, when made in a systematic, thorough-going fashion
for a sufficient number of Irish centres, will make possible a gen-
eral work on early Irish immigration to the United States. Mr.
O'Dwyer points the way. New England is a section given to
genealogies and local histories, as well as to local historical
societies. And some day from this material will arise a true his-
tory of New England, one which will emphasize the period after
1815 quite as much as the Colonial.
This sketch of the early Irish in Lowell is not entirely a
eulogy, and rightly so. The immigrants did not make New Eng-
land. They afforded the necessary labor when factories were re-
placing the domestic system, and canals and railroads were being
constructed. Their labor and Yankee capital made New England
an industrial centre. It was mutually advantageous. The Puri-
tans did not like the Irish, nor did they understand them. How-
ever, the Irish came to stay. Ultimately they prospered. The
pioneer generation suffered, labored hard, but built well. Canal
and railroad gangs constructed Catholic churches and blazed a
trail for the later Irish immigrants and coming generations. In
1822, an Irish laborer in Lowell was a curiosity, a Catholic was
a novelty. A century has worked a change. Outside the field of
capital, Lowell is more Irish than "native American," and count-
ing the newer immigrants assuredly more Catholic than Calvinist.
THE HUMAN COSTS OF THE WAR. By Homer Folks. New
York: Harper & Brothers. $2.75 net.
As Organizer and Director of the Department of Civil Affairs
of the American Red Cross in France, and later as special Com-
missioner to Southeastern Europe, the author was placed in a
position to gather large groups of facts bearing upon the profound
and almost unspeakable losses of the great World War. The book
contains forceful illustration secured by Lewis W. Hine, of the
American Red Cross Special Survey Commission.
The treatise is not merely a cold compilation of scientific
data. There are, naturally, numerous tables of percentages which
will be of value to those who need to know results and tendencies
for the proper and purposeful handling of big social problems,
but there is more than this. The statistical skeleton, so servic-
able to social anatomists, is artfully covered with the flesh and
flower of descriptions and reflections which are thoroughly
1921.] NEW BOOKS 689
human. The tender sympathy which fairly breathes from the
pages should serve as an impetus to the exercise of Christian
charity, both individually and socially.
CARTAGENA AND THE BANKS OF SINU. By R. B. Cunning-
hame Graham. New York: George H. Doran Co. $6.00.
Prescott's classics, The Conquest of Mexico and The Con-
quest of Peru, have made familiar two of the three great roman-
tic episodes in the history of Spanish discovery in America. Few
English readers are familiar with the third romance, the con-
quest of New Granada. Prescott himself, we are told, intended to
use his force and skill in weaving the narrative of Spanish ex-
ploits in Columbia and Venezuela, but blindness and death stopped
his work short of this goal.
Cunninghame Graham has neither the force nor the skill of
a Prescott, but his love of the romantic and picturesque in Spanish
conquest, and the accident of a trip into the Department of
Bolivar, in Columbia, have led him to scratch the surface of the
history of New Granada in his latest book. The first half of the
book is given over to the history of Don Pedro de Heredia and two
or three of his contemporaries, taken largely from the chronicle
of Enciso, and the rest of the volume is an account of the author's
own travels in search of a convenient location for an English
packing-house for Columbian cattle.
The historical part is interesting enough as far as it goes,
but it would have gained immeasurably in fascination and his-
torical value if its scope had been widened and the author had
made more liberal use of such authorities as Padre Sim6n, Pied-
rahita and Castellanos, historians of great merit, but scarcely
known to English readers.
The book contains some notable tributes to the enlightened
colonial policy of Spain, and appreciations of the fruits of this
policy in the lives of the cultured Columbians of today.
Unfortunately, time and travel have hardly mellowed the
stern Scotch character of the author (who is now in his sixty-
ninth year), and occasional flashes of brutal bigotry mar the
pages of what would otherwise be a very worthy book, and
for which Catholics should be especially grateful. As in
his previous books on Hispanic America, (A Vanished Arcadia^
Eternal Diaz del Castillo, etc.), Cunninghame Graham displays a
violent hatred for priests, and a fulsome admiration for the fruits
of their labors. One of the most lovable historians of the New
World was Padre Sim6n, a gentle and learned Franciscan; yet
the author, in borrowing Simon's account of a massacre by
VOL. cxiii. 44
690 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
Heredia, attributes charity to him only by way of concession: "To
do him justice, the good Father does not exult in the exploit of
Heredia, but tells the episode quite feelingly, much in the spirit
that a man, seated in his club, who reads that an earthquake has
overwhelmed ten or twelve thousand Chinamen in some remote
place on the Yangtse, exclaims, 'Poor things!* and goes on with
his tea."
His flippant narrative of the life and labors of St. Peter
Claver is really sacrilegious, and sacrilege is always bad form, to
say the least.
The book is well printed (in Great Britain) and substantially
bound, but lacks chapter headings and an index.
OUR FAMILY AFFAIRS. By E. F. Benson. New York: George
H. Doran Co. $4.00.
The Bensons are surely the most biographied and autobiog-
raphied family of modern English society. Arthur Christopher
Benson includes among his more than forty published volumes a
two-volume official biography of his father, the Archbishop of
Canterbury: the Memoirs of his brother, Robert Hugh: a Life and
Letters of his sister, Maggie; and a group of studies of the friends
of the family, entitled The Leaves of the Tree. Robert Hugh pub-
lished his spiritual autobiography in The Confessions of a Convert,
and since his lamented death, in 1914, has been the subject of a
two-volume Life by Father Martindale, S.J., and of several minor
biographical and critical monographs in book and pamphlet form.
Now Edward Frederic, the younger surviving brother, nobly
brings up the rear with this altogether delightful record of the
whole blessed family ! But one is willing to w r ager that the stream
of Bensonian reminiscence is not yet dried up; it is merely tem-
porarily dammed. The present volume brings the tale of the
family affairs up to 1896, only the year the Archbishop died.
Every reader of this record will await eagerly the sequel that is
sure to come.
Meantime one gloats over the immediate good gift. "E. F."
(best known to Americans as the author of Dodo) skillfully ex-
hibits the Archbishop in his headmastering days at Wellington;
in the Lincoln Chancery; in the See of Truro in fact, through all
the stages of his dominating progress until he sat down with
austere dignity in the cathedral of Canterbury. It is ever so much
more vivid and moving a portrait than that drawn by "A. C." in
the official biography. "E. F." makes some interesting comments
on Robert Hugh's life and work, and gives not a few exquisite
glimpses of their splendid mother mulier fortis if ever there
1921.] NEW BOOKS 691
was one. Here is a penetrating criticism: "As works of art his
[Robert Hugh's] sermons far transcended his books, an opinion
which no one, I think, who ever listened to that tumultuous elo-
quence could doubt. They carried his untrammeled message;
while he preached, he could say with supreme instinctive art all
that in novel- writing he had more indirectly to convey; his ser-
mons had an overwhelming sincerity, which made the delivery of
them flawless and flamelike."
Our Family Affairs is far^ and away the best of all E. F.
Benson's many books.
HANDBOOK OF MORAL THEOLOGY. Volume IV. By Rev.
Antony Koch, D.D. Adapted and Edited by Arthur Preuss,
St. Louis : B. Herder Book Co. $2.50 net.
The fourth volume of Dr. Koch's excellent manual of moral
theology deals with man's duties to God. Part I. treats of faith,
hope, charity, and prayer. Part II. of the duty of external wor-
ship sacrifice, vows, sacrilege, simony, oaths, and superstition.
Part III. discusses the Commandments of the Church their ob-
ject, history, number and binding force.
Many interesting problems are discussed in this volume-
Christian Science, Spiritism, Witchcraft, the origin of the Apos-
tles' Creed, the Rosary and the Salve Regina, the laws of the
Index.
These volumes are intended for the educated Catholic lay-
man, who wishes to study in brief compass the teachings of moral
theology. The author omits nothing essential, gives numerous
references to the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers and to theologians,
and adds to each chapter a most complete bibliography.
ST. LEONARD OF PORT-MAURICE. By Father Dominic Devas,
O.F.M. New York : Benziger Brothers. $1.75 net.
Father Devas informs us in his introduction that this "is no
learned work, nor, in any sense, a historical study, but a simple
Life of a deeply religious priest, a Franciscan and a Saint."
Barring the fact that the little book is scholarly, without
being at all pedantic, the foregoing description is quite adequate.
The biographer, wherever possible, has allowed the eighteenth
century friar to speak for himself, and the result is most felicitous.
It is as if one were chatting with the Saint during recreation in
one of the houses of his Order, or pacing with him the garden
paths of his beloved solitude at Incontro. We can think of
nothing better, except the Sacred Scriptures, for reading while in
retreat. The typography is faultless, and the illustrations add a
692 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
touch of distinction. Not the least valuable portion of the Life is
the Appendix, containing the celebrated sermon delivered by St.
Leonard at the erection of the Stations of the Cross in the Col-
iseum at Rome.
DOCTRINAL DISCOURSES. By Rev. A. M. Skelly, O.P. Pub-
lished by the Dominican Sisters, Aquinas Academy, Tacoma,
Washington. $2.00.
Father Skelly has just published the third volume of his
excellent series of doctrinal discourses for the Sundays and chief
Festivals of the Year. The period in this volume covers the time
between the third Sunday after Easter to the Third Sunday after
Pentecost inclusive. They include sermons on the Precious
Blood, the Passion, the Sacred Heart, the Holy Ghost, Devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, the Trinity, Heaven, Prayer, St. Paul, St.
John the Baptist, the Feast of the Visitation.
They are well thought out, carefully written, and suggestive.
THE DIVINE ADVENTURE. By Theodore Maynard. New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Reviews in the secular press have clearly indicated that this
novel's interest is not narrow, notwithstanding that it concerns
itself essentially with Catholicism, giving aspects of the Church
from within and without. The principals are Michael Donovan,
a young Catholic poet and mystic, and two Protestants, John
Bradley and his sister, Marjorie, both of whom are eventually
received into the Church. As was to be expected, Mr. Maynard's
contribution is out of the ordinary, moving along none of the
established lines of procedure in which the Catholic personages
serve as inspirers or guides, frequently both. Thus, though
Michael's acquaintance with Marjorie deepens into love and mar-
riage, he is the instrument of neither her conversion nor her
brother's; and his spiritual adventures, in the Fold wherein he
was born, are no less intense and racking than those of John
Bradley, to whom the way of approach is long and difficult.
Virility characterizes the book; a good portion of the content
records the graphic, unconstrained talk of a group of young men
whose habit it is to foregather in a "pub." With equal force and
frankness, the author pictures the temptations and problems that
lie about them in the night-life of London streets. Humor
abounds, both in the scenes of the Pharisaical, non-Conformist
circles in which John Bradley's adolescence was passed, and in
the intimate chapters that tell of life in the Franciscan monastery
wherein Michael spent some time as a novice.
1921.] NEW BOOKS 693
Readers who share the preconceived notions common among
non-Catholics, bid fair to receive some startling new impressions,
notably in the narration of Michael's protracted agony of soul
and the circumstances of his release from a self-imposed vow of
celibacy impressions of balance and proportion, of practicality,
and of beautiful, penetrating mysticism. The author's intention
and its accomplishment may fairly be assumed as summarized in
Marjorie's words to Michael, when, shortly after their marriage,
they go to see John clothed in the Franciscan habit: "How won-
derful the Catholic Church is ... You and I ... and John!
What variety!"
FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP. By Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. New
York : George H. Doran Co. $1.90.
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes has written From Out the Vasty Deep
with the easy grace particularly her own. The subject matter of
the book is less satisfactory. There is the charming English coun-
try house and the usual bevy of guests with whom others have
already made us well familiar, accompanied this time by ghosts
who have appeared to warn their living relatives of impending
harm. It is made plain that "Bubbles," the willful little Spiritual-
ist, whose uncanny power has brought forth these apparitions,
owes her influence to subjecting herself to the evil forces which
she can feel about her. The obvious function of the spirits is to
create dramatic situations, at what would otherwise be a very dull
house party, for all its delightful surroundings. This accom-
plished, Mrs. Lowndes dismisses the ghosts and proceeds to the
real plot: the discovery of an astonishing twofold murder. This
does not surprise the reader, for he has become accustomed, in
reading a novel of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, to expect murder
almost to look upon it as an institution.
DONNE'S SERMONS. Selected Passages. Edited by Logan
Pearsall Smith. New York: Oxford University Press. $2.50.
It is a pity that there is no complete and scholarly edition of
the writings of John Donne in prose and verse. Since the begin-
ning of this century there has been a remarkable revival of in-
terest in the work of this great man. In the closing year of the
last century Edmund Gosse published his charming biography of
the poet, the finest of many biographical narratives from this
sympathetic scholar's pen. Since then, Professor Grierson has
nobly edited the collected poetry of Donne, and Miss Ramsay has
written with learning and taste upon Les Doctrines medievales
chez Donne. But Donne's prose has remained unedited until now.
694 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
Dean Alford's six-volume Works of John Donne, D.D., published
in 1839, is a wretchedly inadequate edition with a deplorably
inaccurate text.
The present edition is a selection of the best of the poet's
prose, with a critical and biographical introduction. It does for
Donne exactly what was needed and does it perfectly. No finer
piece of editorial work on an English text has come from the
Oxford Press this many a day. The introduction is a masterpiece
in little, and a permanent addition to the critical literature on its
subject. Great as is the poetry of Donne, his prose is even greater.
"There," says "Q.," in one of his fine lectures from the Cambridge
Chair, "there is where you shall seek for the great Donne, the real
Donne ... in his Sermons, which contain (as I hold) the most
magnificent prose ever uttered from an English pulpit, if not the
most magnificent prose ever spoken in our tongue." A large
claim, no doubt, but there is not a little in this delightful volume
to sustain it.
THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL. By the Rev. Frederick A. Houck.
New York: Frederick Pustet Co.
This volume on the Theological Virtues is a sequel to Our
Palace Wonderful; and the author tells us, in his preface, that
throughout both books he has endeavored "to repay attention, as
well as attract it." He has achieved his purpose. In presenting,
according to St. Augustine's words, the Faith as the foundation,
Hope the superstructure, and Charity the unitive principle of the
Spiritual Temple, he makes a clear, practical appeal, in which
his own thoughts and those of the writers he quotes, are so skill-
fully assembled that the content is brief, yet eminently satisfying.
The felicitous phrasing, simplicity and earnestness of Father
Houck's address give it a character always grateful to lay readers.
Those who avail themselves of the present opportunity will find
the three virtues set before them in a new and closer light, re-
vealing to many sources of help and consolation hitherto un-
realized.
THE SONG OF LOURDES. By Rev. John Fitzpatrick, O.M.I.
New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.75 net.
A welcome little book is this metrical version of the story of
Lourdes. Father Fitzpatrick has divided his song into three
parts: "The Apparitions;" "Bernadette;" "On Pilgrimage." The
versification is of varied form, the couplet obtaining principally,
broken by interludes in different measures. Naturally, the qual-
ity also varies. At times, the substance is bare narrative, in
1921.] NEW BOOKS 695
rhyme ; this is especially the case during the first part, but, as we
progress, we find the author's fancy playing most engagingly
around the facts of Bernadette's life after she had left Lourdes,
and rising steadily in poetical expression, which reaches its
height in "On Pilgrimage." It is in this section that occurs the
interlude, "Rush on, O Gave," which calls for particular mention,
as does also the Lourdes Benedicite, which succeeds it.
The work is a lovely tribute to Our Lady. Such small blem-
ishes as an occasional faulty rhythm are beneath notice in a bit
of writing so instinct in every line with ardent devotion to her,
that it needs must quicken that of the Catholic reader.
UNCLE MOSES. By Sholom Ash. Translated from the Yiddish
by Isaac Goldberg. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50.
One of the most compelling and artistically realistic novels of
the last few years is undoubtedly this story of Uncle Moses, the
rich and brutal owner of a sweat-shop on the East Side. The
story has the authentic tragic note the fall from honor and
prosperity (a fat and greasy prosperity, it is true, but yet pros-
perity) to shame, disappointment, loneliness and death. When
we first meet Uncle Moses he is arrogant, dominant, and cruel;
at the end he is broken and disgraced: and between these two
extremes is compressed a great deal of knowledge of human
nature, especially of human nature in its more sordid aspects.
The author of Uncle Moses is a present-day Yiddish writer
of considerable repute among his own people, and certainly this
book, by its union of a nervous style, accurate observation and ar-
tistic restraint gives ample warrant for his fame. The translator,
too, deserves commendation for his smooth rendering.
ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS. By William Lyon Phelps.
New York : The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
This volume contains essays on Barrie, Shaw, Galsworthy,
Fitch, Maeterlinck, and Rostand, all of whom are treated with that
insight and understanding which go far to establish Professor
Phelps' reputation as one of the two or three foremost critics in
America. His treatment of that elusive genius, Barrie, is par-
ticularly happy and his praise of Rostand, whom it has become
the fashion in some quarters to disparage, is music in the ears of
those who regard Cyrano de Bergerac as one of the most brilliant
of modern dramas. Professor Phelps' opinions are so vividly and
candidly expressed as to be unfailingly thought-provoking. He
believes that Barrie, Shaw, and Galsworthy are the three greatest
of living English dramatists, and if one refuses to assent to this
696 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
judgment, one is hard put to it to substitute greater names in
their places. The author has the gift of often summarizing a
whole chapter of criticism in a witty line, as when he says of two
of Barrie's best known novels: Sentimental Tommy gave evidence
of inspiration; Tommy and Grizel of perspiration."
Professor Phelps is frankly a lover of good things on the
stage, and these delightful essays written in a popular style and
rich in humor, wit, insight, appreciative understanding, and a
wholesome sanity which is not the least of the author's gifts, will
appeal to every lover of the modern drama, and will add substan-
tially to that large section of the American public to whom a new
book by Professor Phelps is a literary event.
THE POLITICAL ASPECTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S CITY OF
GOD. By John Neville Figgis, Litt.D. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $2.50.
These six lectures were delivered by Dr. Figgis at Oxford in
1918. They discuss the general scope of the De Civitate Dei, its
influence in the Middle Ages and in modern times, and St. Augus-
tine's concept of the State and the Church. A brief appendix
gives a summary of the literature which has grown up around the
City of God from the time of Thomas Valois in 1468 to Sommer-
lad's treatise published in Leipsic in 1910. The best edition is
that in the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum by E. Hoffmann.
THE FIRST SIR PERCY. By Baroness Orczy. New York: George
H. Doran Co. $2.00.
This is a rattling, slashing tale of adventure of the time and
country of Maurice of Nassau. It has to do with brave deeds
by moonlight and otherwise love, battle, friendship, and black-
hearted villainy. Sir Percy Blakeney, "the Laughing Cavalier"
of a previous novel by this author, is the hero, and from the first
chapters, which describe his marriage to the beautiful Gilda
Beresteyn and his sudden departure immediately afterward at the
call of duty, to the end when he is reunited to her, he passes
through enough perils and weighty toils to daunt any heart less
stout than his own. And through it all the Lord of Stoutenberg
is a worthy and implacably villainous foil to Sir Percy's heroism.
To any reader tired of the drab and realistic novels now in
fashion, the present book will come as an antidote and a relief.
It has all the qualities a romantic tale should possess, with plenty
of action, a minimum of psychologizing, and unfailing high
spirits. Of course, the colors are laid on glaringly and thick,
1921.] NEW BOOKS 697
but that stands out as a merit when contrasted with many of the
novelists of the moment, whose only color seems to be gray, and
that of a rather dim and misty variety.
But why should the reader be irritated with the constant,
and invariably incorrect, use of the verb, "riposte," in place of
"reply." Much philosophy and all the good qualities of the
story are needed to make some seventy-five or a hundred such
inflictions endurable.
JAKE. By Eunice Tietjens. New York: Boni & Liveright. $2.00.
In this study Eunice Tietjens has achieved a memorable
portrait of a weakling, masterly in its subdued toning and its
subtle emotional coloring. Jake is a feckless body, one overborne
in the battle of life, who disarms criticism by his lovableness and
the appeal that all weak courageous things make to our sym-
pathies. The gray, unlifting tragedy of this artist manquA, sacri-
ficed to the rival claims of a selfish mother, and a coarse, vulgar
wife, Garla, is poignantly relieved against the idyllic background
of his friend Ruth's domestic happiness. She it is who writes
this memoir with an intimacy of realization, and a passionate
humanity that stamp the record as verisimilar. The chronicle
of this futile life is epic in its impression of "the quality of eter-
nality in pain" pain, however, which has no other consecration
than the beauty in which it is resolved by the artistry of the
author.
PRINCESS SALOME. A Tale of the Days of Camel Bells. By
Burris Jenkins. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $2.00.
Princess Salome is a kaleidoscopic romance of Antioch and
Jerusalem in the days of Our Lord. As the characters of the story
fare to the sound of camel bells on the caravan route between
these two centres, the immemorial Eastern scene with its exotic
pageantry unfolds itself before our eyes as in a series of dissolv-
ing views. The author spares no pains in his efforts to re-create
the protagonists of the world-drama, and he skillfully weaves
into his narrative all the strands of the Gospel story. The spirit
of the Gospel, however, is lacking in his presentation which relies
for its effects upon the melodramatic treatment of his material.
The element of the sensational is sought at the expense of the
reverence due to the personality of the Protomartyr. The motif
of the novel the degeneration of Salome because of the frustra-
tion of her love for Stephanas fails to illude the reader who is
repelled by the offensive coupling of these two personages.
698 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM, by Terence MacSwiney (New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.00). The late Lord Mayor of Cork has here
expressed the principles of his political philosophy with a clarity and
a precision which prove again that the typical Irish patriot, instead
of being the frenetic enthusiast, the sentimentalist, or the hot-headed
chaser of rainbows depicted by his enemies is, on the contrary, almost
the martyr of his logic. If all workers for ideals, and fighters for great
causes, were able to give such clear, succinct accounts of the principles
underlying their actions as Terence MacSwiney gives of the principles
of the freedom for which he sacrificed his life, there would be less
fighting and more arbitration in this world of conflict. While it is
true that this amazing book, over which broods the shadow of the
author's tragic fate, and the calm words of which seem to be vibrating
with the mastered passion of an inflexible will, deals especially with
Ireland, nevertheless, the principles of freedom are not merely local,
they are universal in their application, and MacSwiney's book deserves
study everywhere throughout the world, in this period of the world's
readjustment.
MESSAGE OF FRANCIS THOMPSON, by a Sister of Notre Dame
L (New York: Benziger Brothers. 85 cents). This more than
usually well written and well printed little book is less an essay in
literary criticism than a painstaking study of Thompson's work ac-
cording to the canons of ethical and religious interpretation: it is, in
fact, a thesis upon Francis Thompson as a religious poet. But the
essential richness of the theme, the wealth of quotation and of literary
allusion in its treatment, make the treatise interesting reading for those
who seriously love the work of this great Catholic artist. The butterfly
is not broken, it is merely catalogued. And being an authentic and
essential mystic as well as a singularly sincere poet, Thompson can
endure this "abashless inquisition" better than most of his singing
confreres.
DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART has made a new heaven in our
old earth, therefore, whatever tends to increase, explain, or
spread it must of its nature carry the fire which Christ came on earth
to enkindle. The Love of the Sacred Heart, illustrated by St. Mar-
garet Mary Alacoque and the Blessed John Eudes, a little volume trans-
lated from the French by a Good Shepherd nun on her bed of pain,
is sure to do much good, for it emanates from the two factors in life
which count most and which we all understand, love and pain. The
foreword by the Redemptorist, Father McMullen, is a very considerable
addition to the value of the book. There are some who complain that
there is too much organization connected with the Devotion to the
Sacred Heart, which of its very nature is interior; but the word organ
itself suggests life put in functional order, and to give external point
and expression to this life of love is to keep the fires burning by
reiterated and orderly direction. The innermost part of it is between
1921.] NEW BOOKS
the individual soul and God, and that is secret, mysterious and beyond
reach and need of outward arrangement. But even here, the Saint of
the Sacred Heart has made practical suggestions towards the right
understanding of the true expression of love. (New York: Benziger
Brothers.)
A NDALUSIA, by W. Somerset Maugham (New York: Alfred Knopf.
/x $3.00), is just the book we might expect of a clever, well-in-
formed, but not very profound, author like Mr. Maugham. It is a work
creditable to the exercise of industry and talents, over a good many
years for there are certain references to Cuba and the Cardinal Spinola
of Seville that date the production of some of these chapters back some
ten or fifteen years at least.
In a book about the "Land of the Blessed Virgin," one would
expect a little more sympathy with the profound devotional sense of
the country. Mr. Maugham is too sincere even to make a pretence
at appreciating this in fact, his viewpoint is so superficial and
casual that we sometimes wince at the self-revelation of his own
shallowness.
A SPIRITUAL RETREAT, by Father Alexander, O.F.M. (New York:
iv Benziger Brothers. $3.00.) To write a worth-while series of
conferences for a retreat is no easy task, yet in this Father Alexander
has succeeded. He has adapted his talks to the verses of the Veni
Sancte Spiritus, thus avoiding monotony in arrangement, while wisely
enforcing attention to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the true retreat
master and the best director for every soul aiming at interior perfec-
tion. His twenty-five conferences, each of eight to ten pages, and
divided usually into four points, are animated by attractive piety, sweet
reasonableness, seriousness without straining, and breadth of view.
Father Alexander is thoroughly versed in Holy Scripture and applies it
constantly and well. Primarily directed to Religious in the cloister
and dedicated to the choir, his book will prove helpful to others dif-
ferently engaged for spiritual reading and meditation.
PARDON AND PEACE, by H. M. Capes (St. Louis: B. Herder Book
Co. $1.50 net). Imaginativeness and ingenuity of construction
are displayed in this novel. It tells the story of a great wrong done
from bitter anti-Catholic prejudice, death overtaking the penitent per-
petrator before reparation could be made. How a dream brought a
happy ending to years of trouble is plausibly handled, while the touch
of mysticism in the suggestion that the dream was in response to the
longings of the erring, restless soul, bringing it pardon and peace, is
given with tact and restraint. The theme, indeed, would not have
been beneath the powers of Monsignor Benson, and is worthy of other
treatment than that which the author has accorded it. This is not
exactly inadequate, but is of a directness that places it among the
fiction that seems especially appropriate for young readers.
700 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
THE WATCH-DOG OF THE CROWN, by John Knipe (New York:
John Lane Co. $1.75), is a well-written romance of the reign of
Edward VI., which holds the reader's interest from first to last.
It deals with Lord Seymour's plot to kill the king and his sister, Mary,
and to put Elizabeth on the throne. Its chief characters are the un-
scrupulous traitor, Seymour, his indefatigable accomplice, Lady Fran-
cis Grey, and the incorruptible Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Henry
Talbot.
The character portraits are drawn with a heavy Protestant brush,
and the history of the times is viewed through unfair Protestant spec-
tacles. We find it rather hard today to stomach Edward VI., Latimer,
and the other worthies of the period who are held up to us as models
of righteousness.
The story, however, is so well told that the average reader will
ignore the false historical setting. The love of the stern Talbot of
Carlisle for the deceitful Lady Francis is dramatically told, although
the conversion of that traitor vixen is too sudden and too improbable.
A WOMAN OF THE BENTIVOGLIOS, by Gabriel Francis Powers
(Notre Dame, Ind. : The Ave Maria Press). The author of this
slim volume of seventy-nine pages deals with her subject in a way that
should excite all fellow biographers to emulation. There is not a dull
line in the entire narrative. Light and shade not too unpleasantly
contrasted, together with a proper degree of pleasant humor, combine
to make three fascinating chapters. Truth is sometimes stranger than
fiction, as we have often been assured, and the experiences of the
Bentivoglio sisters, women of noble blood ("their Odyssey of trials
and disappointments," the biographer happily phrases it), provide
rich illustration of the proverb.
It is well in these days of automobiles and victrolas and airplanes,
and a thousand and one luxuries, for us to be told something of such
austere folk as the Poor Clares; to be made to realize that no one age
or nation has a monopoly of saints; that so recently as the last quarter
of the nineteenth century two women of gentle birth could walk the
streets of New York, homeless and shelterless in the rain; that one of
them could sit in the hallway of the Convent of the Sacred Heart as a
mendicant, lineage and identity undisclosed, bowing her head over her
bowl of soup and thanking God for being able to follow in the footsteps
of her blessed Father, St. Francis.
How it all ended joyfully and how the wanderers came at last to a
safe haven, you must find out by reading the book for yourself.
AN ACREAGE OF LYRIC, by Dorothea Lawrance Mann (Boston:
The Cornhill Co. $1.25). Many of these graceful little poems
have recently appeared in various American magazines. Their gather-
ing together proves at least one thing: that Dorothea Mann is at her
happiest in the really vivid piece of free verse, "In a Flower Shop."
1921.] NEW BOOKS 701
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
Sources for the History of Roman Catholics in England, Ireland and
Scotland, by John H. Pollen, S.J. (Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, New York), is a valuable subject-index for history students
engaged in research of that dark period from the Reformation to the
Catholic Emancipation. The First American Sister of Charity (Eliza-
beth Bayley Seton), by Rev. John C. Reville, S.J. (New York: The
America Press.) The life-story of Mother Seton, foundress of the Amer-
ican Sisters of Charity, reads like a romance. From the Catholic
Truth Society, London: Catholic Defensive and Progressive Organiza-
tion, by Edward Eyre, appeals for the world-wide organization of the
Catholic body for greater influence in all questions affecting human
progress; Why Roman Catholic? by Rev. E. C. Messenger, Ph.B. (Lou-
vain.) The term, "Roman Catholic," is used thoughtlessly by Cath-
olics, who if they realized its history and significance would refuse
to accept it. Psycho-Analysis and Christian Morality, by E. Boyd
Barrett, S.J., is a sane guide to Catholics, carefully explaining wherein
the method admittedly of therapeutic value may be lawful, and wherein
not; Our Separated Brethren, a Plea for Sympathy, by Rev. Leslie J.
Walker, S.J., recommends less controversy about differences and more
sympathy on points of agreement with our Anglican brethren in their
search for truth; The Ship That Was Simon's, a reasoned exposition
of the doctrine of the Primacy of Peter, making special appeal to those
who, having come all the way, halt at this last stumbling-block; St.
Paul a Papist "By Revelation," by Rev. T. J. Agius, S.J., proves the
Apostle's acknowledgment of the Primacy of St. Peter by extensive
quotations from his Epistles. From The Catholic Truth Society of
Canada: Memoir of a Great Convert (Levi Silliman Ives), by Rev. W.
B. Hannon, is of interest to present-day readers in recalling the fact
that Dr. Kinsman was not the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in
America to be reconciled with Rome; "Some Fell Among Thorns," by
Rev. M. V. Kelly, C.S.B., offers a valuable contribution to the "Back
to the Land" movement, addressed to farmers. From the Australian
Catholic Truth Society: Some Catholic Names in Medical Science, by
Rev. Charles F. Ronayne, O.C.C. To controvert the impression that
Catholicism is opposed to human progress, that it fetters the intellect
and unfits its adherents for due fulfillment of their social obligations,
this pamphlet marshals in imposing array the brilliant roster of Cath-
olic names in medical science. Even the woman doctor was present in
the abbesses of the twelfth century, as witness St. Hildegard. In
Spiritism's Two Failures, Rev. Vincent McEvoy, O.P., analyzes the fail-
ure of Spiritism, first, to prove its message from God, and second, to
prove the identity of its supposed spirits; Recent Developments in
Science; Do They Affect Church Doctrine? by Rev. Wilfrid Ryan, S.J.
Theories long accepted as facts have been rejected; the formulas of
yesterday are abandoned today. Great as have been the achievements
of human intellect in the domain of science, the surface has merely been
scratched, yet with such uncertain weapons Holy Writ is attacked.
From The Examiner Press, Bombay: About the Bible, by Most Rev.
Alban Goodier, S.J., Archbishop of Bombay, the first of a series of
instructions on the Bible in an easy, readable style to attract laymen;
Collapses in Adult Life. A Sequel to "The Formation of Character,"
by Ernest R. Hull, S.J., analyzes the possible defects in a teaching
system which produces collapses in adult life of seemingly exemplary
characters, and makes a careful psychological search into the elements
necessary in training for lasting character building.
IRecent Events.
^
After several weeks' negotiations, during
Germany. which the British made a number of mili-
tary demonstrations against the Polish in-
surgents, forcing them to withdraw from some. of the principal
Silesian towns held by them, an apparent solution for the Silesian
crisis was at last effected towards the end of June. The plan,
which was evolved by the British General Henniker in conference
with the German General Hoefer, and unanimously approved by
the Inter-Allied Commission, consisted in alternate withdrawals
towards their respective frontiers by the Polish insurgents and the
German irregulars. To date, the Polish leader, Korfanty, has with-
drawn most of his forces, and General Hoefer has issued, on in-
structions from Berlin, a demobilization order and affirms that his
troops are now all out of Silesia.
Notwithstanding their agreement, some of the Polish forces,
notably the so-called Polish Marine Brigade, from 2,000 to 3,000
strong, with eight 75 field guns, four 105 howitzers, and four
French tanks, has declared itself independent and refuses to with-
draw or disarm; and, on the other hand, certain free corps
formerly under Hoefer are remaining near the Central Silesian
border. Most military observers think that war will again break
out, with the Poles as the aggressors, in which event it is doubtful
whether Hoefer will be able to restrain his men.
An important offshoot of the Silesian situation is the question
of who will foot the bill, now that liquidation of the insurrection
is actually taking place. That Germany will demand reparation
from the Allies for loss and damage in Upper Silesia is regarded as
certain, and she is expected to present a bill running close to
3,000,000,000 paper marks, backed by the arguments that the
Allies were responsible under the Peace Treaty for maintaining
law and order and protecting life and property in Upper Silesia.
Meanwhile the financial situation in Poland has become acute.
In the last two days of June the Polish mark fell more than five
hundred points, being quoted in New York at .04 cents or 2,500
to the dollar. Normally, its par value is the same as the German
mark, 23.8 cents. The crisis has reached such a stage that the
Polish Diet is considering emergency action. Among the pro-
posals to be considered by the Diet's Financial Commission are a
special tax upon capital and the limitation of imports of raw
materials. Owing to the fact that Poland's 1921 crop, because of
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 703
the Bolshevik invasion, will be only fifty-five or sixty per cent, of
pre-war production, it is estimated that Poland will have to im-
port next year possibly one hundred and fifty tons of cereals and
flour. She will also import 400,000 bales of cotton.
On June 28th, the Reparations Commission announced that
Germany had redeemed the second of the twenty $10,000,000
three-month Treasury notes she handed over on June 1st. The
first was paid up about the middle of June. According to a deci-
sion reached a few days previous by the Reparations Commission,
this second payment was made in European currencies instead of
dollars, in which form the initial payments were made. Of
1,000,000,000 gold marks due under the reparations ultimatum,
Germany has so far paid a lump sum of 160,000,000 marks gold
handed over in dollars on June 1st, plus two payments totaling
nearly 88,000,000 marks gold, bringing the total of her payments
to date to about 250,000,000. The remainder of the 1,000,000,000
marks gold is due before August 1st next.
Germany's funded debt on May 31st, recently announced, was
78,345,000,000 marks. Her floating debt on the same date was
400,000,000,000. Railway and postal deficits for the current year
are approximated at 19,000,000,000 marks. The budget provides
an appropriation of 8,500,000,000 marks for maintenance of the
Entente troops in the occupied zone. In addition, of course, the
indemnity payments are to be arranged for.
In order to meet these enormous obligations, the Wirth Cab-
inet has drawn up the following new tax measures : an increased
sugar tax, introduction of a saccharine monopoly, an increased
liquor tax, a new tax (said to amount to thirty per cent.) on the
net profits of corporations, an increased tax on race-track betting,
matches, mechanical lighters, tobacco, beer, and mineral waters.
Furthermore, the Government plans a new insurance tax, and an
increase of the turnover tax on sales from one and one-half to
three per cent., a new automobile tax, and a tax on capital invest-
ment. Altogether, eighty billion paper marks must be raised an-
nually to cover foreign and domestic obligations, an increase over
the present taxes of twenty billions. The Reichsbank statement
for the last week of June reveals the fact that three and one-third
billion new paper marks were put in circulation in that period,
the total paper circulation now exceeding 84,000,000,000 marks.
A political feature of the Government's tax measures is the fact
that it places the Chancellor in a dilemma, since if he emphasizes
the direct tax, he alienates the bourgeois parties, if indirect, the
proletariat, on the support of both of whom his continuance in
office depends.
704 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
The state of war between the United States and Germany was
officially ended, on July 2d, when President Harding signed the
peace resolution which had previously passed both houses of Con-
gress. The resolution merely declared peace between the two
countries, with a reservation of American rights under the armis-
tice and the Treaty of Versailles, but does not actually restore
peace or provide for the resumption of diplomatic relations. For
this a separate treaty between the two countries will probably be
necessary. The problems now being considered by the Adminis-
tration are how long the American troops shall be held in Ger-
many, whether a separate treaty between this country and Ger-
many shall be negotiated and sent to the Senate and whether
some parts of the Treaty of Versailles may be used as the basis of
such a treaty. The German Government has adopted a policy of
reticence on the subject.
Lieutenant General Karl Stenger, charged by the French Gov-
ernment with having ordered troops under his command to take
no prisoners and to kill wounded men during the fighting of
August, 1914, was acquitted on July 6th after a week's trial by
the German Supreme Court at Leipsic. Major Bruno Crusius, tried
on a similar charge, was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced
to two years' imprisonment and forbidden to wear the German
uniform. General Stenger was the commander of the Fifty-third
German Infantry Brigade, and Major Crusius held a command
under him. The trial aroused great attention because of the rank
of the accused, and also because these were the first "war crim-
inal" trials in which France was the accuser. As a result of the
acquittal of General Stenger, and on the ground that the War
trials are a mockery, the French Government has withdrawn its
mission to the Leipsic court, thus disclaiming further confidence
in the procedure, and has notified the Allied Governments of its
action. It is understood that the French Government will ask the
Allies to return to the Treaty plan, and demand that Germany
hand over the accused men for trial by Allied tribunals.
During the last three months Greece has
Greece. been occupying a constantly increasing
share of European political attention, due to
the development of her belligerent plans against the Turkish
Nationalist army of Mustapha Kemal in Anatolia. The Greeks
began operations last March with an army of 110,000 which, at
first, advanced rapidly from their headquarters at Smyrna, but
were later defeated and put to rout, with losses estimated at 6,200.
The primary cause of the war was the failure of the Allies to
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 705
enforce the Treaty of Sevres, which though signed by the Sultan
and the nominal government at Constantinople, was rejected by
Mustapha Kemal and his Nationalist followers who set up a re-
public with Angora as the capital. Greece, under the premiership
of Venizelos, was chosen by the Allies as the military guarantor
of this Treaty, receiving in return a large share of Turkish ter-
ritory. But the restoration of Constantine in November, 1920,
was considered as a cancellation of Greece's signature to the
Sevres Treaty, and last February, in a conference at London, it
was determined by the Allies to restore to Turkey all the Smyrna
provinces which had been given to Greece. Thereupon Con-
stantine began operations.
During the last thirty days there have been further develop-
ments. Late in June, Greece declined an offer of mediation from
the Allies, and on June 26th recaptured from the Turks the town
of Ismid on the Sea of Marmora, fifty-six miles southeast of Con-
stantinople. Several days later the Greeks evacuated Ismid, leav-
ing the road to Constantinople open to the Nationalist forces.
The war on the Ismid Peninsula was characterized by a large
number of atrocities on both sides, the Turks apparently being
the worse offenders. Fifty thousand refugees Greeks, Turks and
Armenians have been removed to Thrace and Constantinople.
Mustapha Kemal recently announced in the Angora Assembly
that a new agreement on much broader lines is about to be con-
cluded with the Soviet Government, and a Turkish delegation has
started for Moscow. This has caused anxiety among the Allies,
but the more immediate cause of anxiety lies in the fact that
Kemal's Nationalist army, which has been pursuing the Greeks
on the northern front since the evacuation of Ismid, is within a
mile and a quarter of the internationalized zone which surrounds
the Bosphorus. The zone is guarded by forces consisting of
British, French and Turkish troops, the latter acting as gendar-
merie commanded by Allied officers, and if the Kemalists cross the
frontier into this zone, naval and military action against them is
inevitable.
Recent dispatches state that Mustapha Kemal has sent a note
to the British Foreign Office, saying he is willing to negotiate the
Near East situation, but he imposes what are considered impos-
sible terms, namely, complete Turkish control of Constantinople
and the Straits and a return of Thrace, Smyrna and other ter-
ritories to Turkey. This would amount virtually to the status quo
ante-bellum in regard to Turkey, both in Europe and Asia Minor.
Moreover, British officials deny the statement in Kemal's message
that they suggested a meeting for negotiations, affirming the real
VOL. cxni. 45
706 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
truth to be that, by agreement between the Allies, strict instruc-
tions were sent to General Harrington, commander of the Allied
forces in Constantinople, that he was not to negotiate, but only to
hear the Nationalist leader's case.
The chief difficulty among the Allies arises from the con-
flict of policy, or lack of policy, as between France and England.
Both countries distrust Constantine, but France all along has been
in favor of a rapprochement with the Nationalists as the de facto
Government in the Near East, whereas, Great Britain opposes this,
as she is fearful of the proposed alliance between the Bolsheviki
and the Nationalists and its possible effects on Afghanistan and
India.
Meanwhile troops, munitions and other supplies have been
arriving at Smyrna daily from Athens, and it is estimated that the
Greeks now have in Asia Minor nearly 300,000 troops, of which
170,000 are at the front. The Greek forces are concentrating on
the Smyrna or southern front, and considerably outnumber the
Turks in artillery, supplies and transport. The evacuation of
Ismid, the Greeks assert, did not materially affect the principal
front and was done for strategic reasons, the Greek division at
Ismid being transferred to Smyrna, where preparations have been
made by Constantine for a major offensive.
French policy, generally speaking, is chiefly
France. operative through two agencies the Allied
Supreme Council and the League of Na-
tions, meeting at Geneva. In both the outcome is largely the
result of a compromise of conflicting interests, principally French
and British. On nearly every important issue since the armistice
there has been a wide variance of opinion between these two
countries, including the Allied policy toward Germany, Russia,
Poland, and now the Turkish-Greek imbroglio, treated above.
Another cause of difference has been the English plan, re-
cently announced by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, of
setting up a distinctly Arabian Government under an Arab head
in Mesopotamia. The policy of the British Government, Secretary
Churchill said, was to create an Arab state friendly to Great
Britain, and it had been decided to ask the House of Mecca to
supply the ruler of the new State. Emir Feisal, who last year was
deposed by the French as King of Syria, has been informed that
if he was acceptable to the people of Mesopotamia he would
receive the backing of the British Government. The aim of the
British policy in this instance seems to be to play the Arabs
against the Turks, but the French are much more bitterly opposed
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 707
to Constantine of Greece than to the Turks, and their attitude
towards Feisal has already been indicated. The result is that
there has been a notable cooling of French sentiment towards the
dual alliance which was projected last month between England
and France.
As for the Council of Ambassadors, outside of discussions on
the Turkish-Greek situation on which no definite decision has yet
been reached, its only apparent action during the past month was
to address to the American Government, on July 1st, a note re-
questing this countrj' to postpone for twenty years her claims
against the Austrian Government. These claims, amounting to
some $20,000,000, relate to food relief advances. This proposal
had previously been made to the United States by the League of
Nations, but no reply has yet been made to either suggestion.
The Council of the League of Nations opened its thirteenth
session at Geneva on June 17th and adjourned on June 28th. The
most important decision arrived at was that the Aland Islands,
which have been in dispute between Sweden and Finland, shall
remain under Finland's sovereignty, but shall be neutralized from
the military standpoint. The Council failed, however, to settle
the Polish-Lithuanian dispute over Vilna. The Council proposed
that General Zellgousky, the Polish commander, should evacuate
Vilna, and that a local militia should be maintained in the con-
tested territory under the auspices of a League military commis-
sion. Meanwhile, the negotiations between the Poles and Lith-
uanians at Brussels were to be resumed. Neither the Polish nor
the Lithuanian delegates would accept this solution, however, and
consequently the dispute will have to go over to the League As-
sembly which meets next September.
Other matters taken up by the League Council included ar-
rangements for the setting up of the permanent International
Court of Justice, in full confidence that a sufficient number of
ratifications will be received to put the plan in effect before the
September meeting of the Assembly. The Council invited Elihu
Root, John Bassett Moore, Judge George Gray of Delaware, and
Oscar S. Straus in their capacity as members of The Hague Arbi-
tration Tribunal, to propose the names of four persons, no more
than two of whom shall be Americans, as candidates for election
as judges of the International Court. On the question of man-
dates with specific reference to the Island of Yap, the Council in-
vited the American Government to send representatives to discuss
the subject, but the American Government did not respond, pre-
ferring that the question should be adjusted through diplomatic
means. Conversations have been begun between Secretary of
708 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
*
State Hughes and Baron Kijuro Shidehara, the Japanese Ambas-
sador to the United States, not only regarding Yap, but also con-
cerning the situation in California and the Far East, and satis-
factory progress is reported.
With regard to specifically French affairs, a meeting from
which much was expected was that held in June at Wiesbaden
between Louis Loncheur, French Minister of the Devastated
Regions, and Walter Rathenau, German Minister of Reconstruc-
tion. The chief matter discussed was the German proposal to
make reparations to France in kind, particularly in the matter of
houses for the devastated regions. The French decided, however,
that the price asked for the houses was too high and rejected the
offer. Nevertheless, hope is still held for an adjustment in the
fact that the negotiations begun at Wiesbaden are to be resumed.
A new financial policy comprising consolidation of loans, no
more new issues of bank notes, no more extraordinary credits, and
the inauguration of drastic economies was recently announced
before the Chamber of Deputies by the French Minister of Finance,
M. Doumer. The budget for 1922 has been cut from 26,000,000,-
000 to 23,000,000,000 francs.
Tonnage figures of French foreign trade given out early in
July by the French Commission in the United States, show that
the volume of France's exports of foodstuffs, raw materials and
manufactured goods in the first three months of 1921 exceeded
that of the first quarter of 1913. This favorable showing was
augmented by an actual decline in tonnage of imports during the
same period. The comparative total French imports in the first
quarter of 1921 were 1,390,000 tons below the total for the 1913
quarter. The commission's deductions from the figures in hand
are that France's foreign trade has reached a state of equilibrium.
Indulgence in rumor seems to be the chief
Russia. occupation of journalists so far as the in-
ternal political affairs of Russia are con-
cerned. The latest report, which persisted throughout the month,
had to do with a reputed break between the two chief Bolshe-
viki, Lenine and Trotzky, culminating in the imprisonment by
the Soviet Premier of his principal aide and Minister of War and
Marine. So far from this being the case, it appears that at the
recent Congress of the Third Internationale which began at Mos-
cow June 12th and continued into July, Lenine, on at least one
occasion, made a speech in favor of the position of Trotzky, Zino-
vieff, Kark Radek and other extremists who were hard pressed
in their fight against delegates favoring a compromise. The Com-
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 709
munist aim, as expressed by Radek, is continued and unceasing
effort for world revolution. The Congress resolved to insist upon
the twenty-one points outlined by the 1920 Congress. It also
threatened to expel from membership the Italian Socialist Party
unless it immediately excluded all reformists, and the Commu-
nist Labor Larty of Germany unless it united immediately with
the more radical German element.
Two important obstacles to the spread of Communist doc-
trines outside of Russia were set up during the month. The first
came from the Executive Committee of the International Federa-
tion of Trade Unions, a body of about 25,000,000 members, em-
bracing the leading Labor Unions of all countries except the
United States and Russia, when it announced, at its recent semi-
annual meeting in Amsterdam, that trade union organizations
controlled by Communists and avowing their adhesion to the
economic arm of the Third Internationale, would not be allowed
to retain membership in the Federation. The second obstacle
was the refusal of the delegates of the Socialist Party of America,
by a vote of thirty-five to four at their annual convention at De-
troit on June 25th, to have international relations of any kind and
their decision to pursue their course alone for the next year.
General Semenoff, the anti-Bolshevik leader, who was re-
ported last month at Vladivostok, left that city late in June, after
failing in his negotiations with the anti-Soviet Government re-
cently set up there. On July 1st dispatches stated that he was in
Manchuria, making military preparations for an attack on Chita,
the capital of the Far Eastern Republic of Siberia. Chita has ap-
pealed to the Russian Soviet Government at Moscow for aid
against the Japanese and the counter-revolutionary forces under
Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. The exact military situation, how-
ever, is shrouded in obscurity.
German industrial and financial interests are reported to have
allied themselves with a similar group in England for the purpose
of seeking business in Soviet Russia. While Germany, like Eng-
land, has negotiated a trade agreement with Russia, it is declared
that these German industrial and financial interests were advised
officially not to take the initiative in seeking to approach the Mos-
cow Government independent of the other Powers. To date the
Anglo-Russian trading agreement has failed to produce anything
near the results which its advocates anticipated, British traders
showing no indications of a readiness to take the necessary risks.
Practically the only export from Russia which is reaching Eng-
land is flax, and this is coming by indirect routes which were open
before the trading agreement was entered upon. In fact, Russia
710 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
is importing less from Great Britain than she is getting both from
Germany and the United States.
Russia's import trade through Latvia and Esthonia for the
month of May amounted to more than 50,000 tons as compared
with 35,000 tons for April. Estimates contained in a Moscow
dispatch indicate that 2,868 freight car loads of exports were sent
out in June. The average Russian freight car carries an eighteen
ton load. Of the imports for the first half of May, fifty-nine per
cent, was food products.
Moscow reports received at Riga late in June say that crops
have been almost completely ruined by the drought in the Gov-
ernments of Ufa, Tsaritsyu, Saratov, Samara, Simbirsk, Viatka,
Perm and Kazam, and also in the Northern Caucasus. In conse-
quence of this situation, the reports add, 25,000,000 people are
facing famine. The entire Russian press is advocating methods
for aiding the people in distress.
With the apparent approval of the French Government the
exiled Governments of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the
North Caucasus Republic met in Paris in June and formed a
union. The territory embraced by these Governments includes
the oil and mineral fields of the Caucasus, now under the control
of the Soviet Government at Moscow. The action of France in
fostering the United States of the Caucasus may be followed by
interesting developments, in the relations of the Allied nations,
as England for months has been endeavoring to get a better hold
on this territory, and, in addition, the Royal Dutch oil interests
have acquired control of the Baku oil system, formerly controlled
by the French.
To the great surprise of political observers,
Italy. the Giolitti Cabinet resigned on June 27th.
The resignation came about from the hos-
tile reception of a speech of Count Sforza, the Foreign Minister, on
the foreign policy of the Government, especially with that portion
of it dealing with Fiume and the Treaty with the Jugo-Slavs signed
at Rapallo. Count Sforza's most outspoken critics were the Fas-
cisti, while the Nationalists, Conservatives, Socialists and others
also expressed disapproval of various other points of his policy.
Signor Giolitti made the vote one of a question of confidence in
the Government, and when this was not forthcoming, the Cabinet
decided to resign.
On July 1st, the King intrusted Signor Bonomi, who was Min-
ister of the Treasury in the Giolitti Cabinet and previously Min-
ister of War and Minister of Public Works, with the task of form-
1921.] RECENT EVENTS 711
ing a new Cabinet. The new Cabinet, which was announced
several days later, is composed of the Centrist elements of several
parties, Signer Bonomi having excluded both the Extreme Lefts
and Rights and the Nationalists and Socialists. The new Ministry
contains three Liberals, two Reformists, three Catholic Centrists,
three Social Democrats, and four Liberal Democrats.
Another effect of Count Sforza's speech was an outbreak in
Fiunie. Former d'Annunzian legionaries assembled in that city
and marched to and occupied Porto Barros, commercially the most
eastern harbor of the city. Count Sforza had declared that Porto
Barros should be ceded to Jugo-Slavia because it did not form an
integral part of the port of Fiume, and this was interpreted by the
legionaries as an inducement to the Jugo-Slavs to use the port of
Fiume instead of building a new port, for which American capital
had been offered. Porto Barros lies directly across the Fiamana
River and south of the Croatian labor colony of Sussak. In the
Treaty of Rapallo the line which was to divide the new State of
Fiume from Jugo-Slavia descended the river. In his last fight
for Fiume, d'Annunzio charged that, in a secret clause to the
Treaty, Porto Barros was to be ceded to Jugo-Slavia. This was
officially denied at the time.
On the day following the seizure of Porto Barros the legion-
aries attempted to storm the bridge between Fiume and Sussak,
which was held by Alpini. The latter were obliged to fire, killing
four and wounding twenty. Partly as a result of this incident
d'Annunzio's adherents have reorganized their forces into a con-
tingent which is to be ready for any emergencies that may arise,
and former followers are congregating in Fiume. D'Annunzio has
sent one of his characteristically bombastic messages. The ob-
stinacy of political leaders inside the city, prevents the consti-
tutional Government from functioning, and control of affairs is in
the hands of General Foschini, commander of the Italian regular
troops in Fiume. There is much unrest in the city, and all party
leaders have requested their followers not to carry arms in the
streets, so that further bloodshed may be prevented.
Speaking before the Chamber of Deputies on June 22d, Pro-
fessor Benito Mussolini, former Socialist leader who went over
to the Fascisti, criticized the attitude of the Government in South-
ern Tyrol and Istria, which, he asserted, favored the Germans and
Slavs. Referring to Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of Swit-
zerland south of the Gothard range, he declared that a Germanized
Ticino might greatly endanger the safety of Lombardy and Upper
Italy, and also insisted that the Gothard range was Italy's natural
northern frontier. He expressed himself as favorable to a recon-
712 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
ciliation between the Vatican and the Italian Government, re-
marking that the development of Catholicism throughout the
world was leading hundreds of millions of men to look upon Rome
as the centre of the universe, which Professor Mussolini declared
meant a great moral force for Italy. With regard to Palestine, the
speaker said Italy must either choose the English viewpoint or
that expressed by Pope Benedict in his allocution in the recent
Consistory, he himself thinking that Italy must adopt the latter.
The point in his speech that attracted the most comment, how-
ever, was his reference to Ticino, which has aroused a veritable
storm of disapproval and resentment throughout Switzerland.
Most of the school teachers in Ticino, which is perfectly content
with its present status and has no desire for annexation to Italy,
are young Italian priests and Christian brothers, and one result of
Mussolini's provocative speech will probably be that the Swiss
Government will forbid any but born Swiss non-clericals to teach
in the Ticino schools.
During the past month the Fascisti were not so active as
during the several previous months, only one outbreak having
occurred. This took place at the town of Grosseto, Tuscany, to-
wards the end of June, when the Fascisti made an attack in which
sixteen persons were killed, fifteen of whom were Communists,
and fifty others wounded. The Fascisti, who made their attack in
military fashion, were seeking revenge for the death of a comrade
who had been killed the previous day in an encounter with Com-
munists.
In addition to the casualties inflicted, the Fascisti ransacked
the Labor Exchange, a Communist newspaper office, and several
Communist homes. The Socialist Municipal Council was forced
to resign for fifteen days.
July U, 1921.
With Our Readers.
HPHE more a man possesses, the more he craves. For the spirit
of man to grow, it must feel the need of further and greater
life or possessions may choke the spirit, and the more a man has,
the more may he become self-sufficient. Material riches make
the world appear a fair dwelling-place, and obscure, if they do
not hide, the kingdom of heaven. And riches of other kinds may
be as great, if not greater, obstacles to the remembrance and the
attainment of that super-earthly kingdom for which man was
made.
* * * *
ORDER is the first law, not only of heaven, but also of earth.
And the foundation of any order in the soul and body of man
is that he "is not his own." All that he possesses is God's, nor
may he hold it or think of it save, first and foremost, as the gift
and the possession of God Himself. If he forget this, or, not ex-
plicitly excluding it, if he fail to remember it, he becomes really
an enemy of God, of himself, and of his fellows.
And the second great principle of order, like unto the first,
is that, as he is not his own, so also is he bought with a great
price the redeeming Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Not only is man possessed of God, but he is redeemed from his
sins and his weakness; he is possessed also by the Son of God,
the man Jesus Christ, our God and our Saviour. He is dependent;
he has nothing of himself. He cannot claim wisdom as his own;
neither need he sit in despair or darkness. He is owned, body
and soul, thought and act, by Christ in Whom alone he has life,
true life either here or hereafter.
* * * *
r "T l O the unbeliever, to those cursed by the hope or the belief that
I the universe of itself will yet yield the wisdom and expe-
rience, man's own finding, which will make him sufficient unto
himself and the world its own explanation, the above truths are
foolish and a stumbling-block. For just as material riches,
wealth, physical property can make the individual man happy,
contented, blind, so also can mental riches so deceive the indi-
vidual with the idea of self-possession and self-sufficiency as to
blind him to God's right over him, and his need of God and of
God's Son, the Incarnate Christ.
It is a question whether these latter riches be not more dan-
714 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
gerous and foolish than the former. Self is never so deceived as
when it flatters itself that it is doing a great and noble work.
"Ye shall be as gods," is still a most effective invitation, testifying
to the depths to which we may fall and the heights to which we
have been called. The human soul rebels, as a rule, against
what is palpably, grossly evil, and, at least publicly, man must
refrain from it. Unless he attain some good, he will feel poor.
If, in the attaining of the good, the highest good, he still
retained the grace and knowledge of his abiding poverty, he would
be saved. If, after laboring all night, he still knew that he had,
of himself, taken nothing, he would look for and receive the
Master's blessing. Just in as far as man remembers and acts
upon the fundamental truth "we are not our own, we are bought
with a great price," just so far will he know the way of peace
and of wisdom. Let riches choke the seed, and there will be no
harvest, but confusion and bitterness and the dark night.
* * * *
IT is not so much man's sins as his blessings that have blinded
him, or perhaps more truly it is because he has made of the
blessings a pact to selfishness. For the modern world and its
modern spirit, forgetting God, has made the riches of man, his
luxury, his moral standards, the fruit of his experience, all suf-
ficient for man. Modern scientific literature practically preaches
that man is his own beginning and his own end. Such teaching
is a most evident contradiction of all the facts of life and expe-
rience, of nature and of revelation, but none is so blind as he
who will not see. It may be warmly argued against this statement
that there has been a world-wide revolt against the gross mate-
rialism of a quarter of a century ago. And the protest is war-
ranted. But to that materialism has succeeded a humanitarian-
ism, oftentimes likewise perverted, and, when perverted, preg-
nant with greater dangers because it is so much the higher gift,
the nobler aspiration. Out of this self-sufficiency will come the
painful disillusionment, and he is a shallow, inhuman man who
will let humanity "try it out" instead of bearing to humankind
the sole truth and light which foretell redemption.
* * * *
INDEED, we as Catholics are lamentably near-sighted in our
A faith if we do not see the need, greater than ever, and the op-
portunity most blessed for the mission of Catholic truth, not only
in the practical welfare work which we must be doing, but also
in the defence of right philosophy, the everlasting truths that
underlie human society, its well-being and its progress, and in the
exposition of those revealed truths which alone can keep man on
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 715
the right upward road with his face turned hopefully towards the
stars.
* * * *
* I *HE modern world is not only in danger. It has actually taken
cultivated, high, mental and spiritual possessions and made
them all-sufficient for humankind. Education is to be the pana-
cea that will cure all human ills or, at least, elevate modern
democracy to the height where its ills will be few. The researches
in biology have dictated a new method whereby the human race
is to be saved from the unfit. "The Commissioner of Immigra-
tion," says a recent biologist, "should be an anthropologist, exer-
cising authority, conferred on him by a congress of biologists,
and this authority, and his own expert knowledge, should enable
him to discriminate and decide, untrammeled by national or inter-
national politics, as to what kind of germ plasm should not enter
our borders. For once here, this germ plasm will be part of our
national germ plasm, and will help determine the fundamental
character of our race and our nation. It will have its share in
Americanization."
"There should be a commissioner of Americanization who
should know more about the laws of heredity than about pedagogy
or civics. And he should have the authority to prevent the per-
petuation of obviously bad and dangerous germ plasm, and to pre-
vent the degradation of good germ plasm by mixture with bad.
Don't call this eugenics; call it scientific Americanization."
Thus, in our self-sufficiency, we "can remain a great nation,
we can become a greater nation. With two such commissioners
on the job, everything will be possessed by us so that we will be
able to meet every stress or emergency, although all the rest of the
world rock in cataclysm."
Thus has one mind become lost, intoxicated, choked by the
riches his investigations have yielded. This one mind is typical.
* * * *
T EARNING is a great blessing; education is a great blessing;
I* but perverted, it may curse, as well as bless. Learning can
lift us up and show the way of progress. Without that synthesis
that includes the Giver as well as the receiver, the Source as well
as the deposit, it is its own undoing. Government is a great good;
unbalanced and uncontrolled, it may be a tyranny. Liberty is our
most heavenly of qualities; yet it may become "procuress to the
lords of hell." The balance must be kept. The only power that
has kept it in the history of civilization is the Catholic Church,
the Church that, like Simeon, has held and holds before the world
the Truth. "We are not our own, we are bought with a great price."
716 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
Divinely rich as is the Book that gives us the words, its very
riches led to the present modern confusion and denial when,
through those riches, Protestantism made man all sufficient, suf-
ficient to be his own sole guide in things human and in interpre-
tations divine.
The power that preserved the balance then and that saved
civilization, preserves and saves to this day. Out of her truth
grew the knowledge of liberty which enlightens the world. And
yet that knowledge is being lost sight of in this our own country
of liberty, because God and Christian truth are excluded from the
instruction of the young and the education of our people; because
metropolitan journals, with a circulation of millions, can explic-
itly deny God, and yet be read and supported by our people.
"Independence and democracy," declares a writer in the July
Yale Review, "are not liberty, and do not of themselves assure
liberty. Indeed, not only is it entirely possible, but it is by no
means improbable, that with independence (freedom from for-
eign control) unchallenged, and with democracy (freedom from
monarchic or oligarchic rule) growing more and more complete
and more absolute, liberty may decline and shrivel. Whether it
will or not, depends above all upon the question how much we
really care for liberty."
* * * *
WE have sought our remedy in humanitarianism that is the
most popular slogan of the day. "But," as this writer
points out, "humanitarianism is in some aspects akin to material-
ism." The humanitarian seeks the elimination of discomforts
and of sacrifices. Not so was liberty gained. Not so is it or will
it be preserved. Liberty and equality are born of the truth of our
redemption through Jesus Christ, our oneness in and with Him.
Sacrifice is as essential as is Christ Himself. The foundation is
eternal, as is the gift itself. And unless man realizes it as eternal,
he will never appreciate, much less realize, that liberty wherewith
Christ has made him free. That alone has made human liberty
possible and attainable.
'T'HE last month in Ireland has been crowded with events of
A great significance. Their full importance can be judged only
from that to which they will immediately lead. As we go to press,
the conference of the Irish leaders with the English Premier is
being held in London. There is no doubt about one point, and
that is: the moral sentiment of the entire world is with Ireland
and her age-long fight for freedom and national life. Our prayers,
and, we feel sure, the prayers of all our readers, have been, and
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 111
will be, weighted with the plea to our Father in Heaven and His
Son Jesus Christ that the conference will open the way to peace
with honor Ireland with a government of, and by, and for her
own people.
NO better evidence of H. G. Wells* unfitness to write an outline
of universal history could possibly be furnished than his
own apologia, published in the Yale Review for July. Wells
asserts that in his Outline he did "try to give all history as one
story." He, therefore, attempted a synthetic work, which, how-
ever much it might omit or include, must, first of all, give what it
gave in right proportion, and, secondly, show the oneness, the
solidarity of the human race. Without this, all human history as
one story is self-contradictory. Yet, in this very article, Wells
admits that he has given human history from one particular point
of view, a godless one the now old-fashioned radical material-
istic evolution. Thus does he omit from the synthesis. Spencer
attempted the same thing in philosophy long ago and Spencer
is absolutely discredited today.
Wells, with an open-mindedness that will deceive the unwary,
pleads his anxiety to receive correction and to learn therefrom.
But all he is willing to do, is to transfer the chapters on the rise
of the Dutch Republic; change or delete the chapter on changes
in the earth's climate; modify, by reason of more recent research,
his comments on the cultural beginnings of civilization; correct
some points about the education of Gladstone; qualify his com-
ments on the Peace Conference; and drop any reference to the
philosophy of the Catholic Church on the question of Nominalism.
Wells admits that he doesn't know as much history "as he
ought to," but he is something of a specialist in "historical gen-
eralities." There is a difference, he maintains, between "the
study for knowledge" and "the general education of a citizen."
The latter, evidently, does not necessarily include exact knowl-
edge: it is concerned with what we know as "glittering general-
ities." And this is as far as "the people" can be expected to go.
* * * #
T^HUS does one of the most loud-mouthed champions of democ-
A racy in education reveal himself and his real contempt for the
intellectual capabilities and dignity of the many. And 'tis from
this proud aristocrat that many modern schools are content to
take not only their history, but their philosophy concerning man,
his beginning and his destiny.
Like all proud aristocrats, he graces himself with humility.
H. G. Wells, according to his own admission, is "sometimes a very
718 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
careless writer." Some critics have sneered because a novelist
has written an outline of universal history. Does Mr. Wells'
answer the criticism and show his qualifications for his change
of avocation? No, indeed. He reminds his reader that he hasn't
claimed that his Outline was done capably and well. He should
escape all criticism; he should be lauded for his service to human-
ity, however incomplete and imperfect it may be, because he has
done that which was needed and which nobody else did. "It is
that he has stepped in and done something urgently necessary
that would not otherwise have been done at all." In the face of
such puerile pleading, honest, capable criticism must helplessly
lower its hands and give up.
* * * *
one of his principal critics, Wells answers that what the
critic took exception to "are novel ideas for his type and his
type is incapable of novel ideas," that Christianity is "a purely
European religion" is "'nonsense;' and let the stuff go at that."
Mr. Wells has in his Outline provided pictures of our imaginary
ancestors. Taxed with making them out of a few questionable
bones and theories, Wells confesses, but blandly adds: "They are
to help the imagination of the weaker brethren, and they pretend
to do no more than that." But such a footnote is absent from the
Outline itself.
* * * *
HPO a Catholic critic Wells' answer may be summed up thus:
"They have presented to him but a point of view." He states :
"Catholics, I gather, do not believe in progress. It (a Catholic
history) will be, I presume, a history of the creation (explaining
logically why the ichthyosaurus was made), the salvation, and the
subsequent stagnation of mankind."
Mr. Wells declares: "I offer Catholics the Outline of History
for use in their schools in the most amiable spirit," yet in a pre-
ceding sentence he states there are fundamental differences be-
tween the Outline and the story implicit in orthodox Catholic
teaching. After reading his apologia, the reader will find little
reason to justify Mr. Wells in protesting against the dark preju-
dices of today.
PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC COUNTRIES COMPARED, a
work by the late Father Alfred Young, C.S.P., first published
in 1895, is the subject of a lengthy notice in the "Book Leader"
of the Boston Pilot, July 2, 1921. The writer declares that "in
this day there is particular need that a comparison be instituted
whereby the conditions prevailing in countries professing God
1921.] WITH OUR READERS 719
and keeping His law, and those who have run the gamut of
materialism and naturalism be put in juxtaposition."
This volume brings out the universal character of the Church :
"She alone among all the organizations of this world can lay
claim to and prove her international character. It is such as to
bring all her members into one great brotherhood, members of the
Body of Christ, so to speak."
# # # *
T^ATHER YOUNG "begins his treatise by showing in every de-
partment of human activity where Catholic countries, that is,
such countries as have professed the Church and enshrined the
code of Catholic ethics in the high and low places, have forged to
the fore among civilized nations, while those which have over-
looked or ignored Christian standards of life and action, have en-
joyed, perhaps, temporary progress and peace, but in the end have
fallen from their place of honor and gone to oblivion."
He "gives copious and extended citations from historians who
are widely acknowledged to have had no love for the Church in
defence of his thesis. Not alone present-day historians, but those
of antiquity are brought to strengthen the assertion of the
Church's predominance in fortifying the ramparts of government,
rehabilitating falling standards and promoting the general welfare
of the people. His point is to drive home forcibly that the Church,
and she alone, holds the key to national and international har-
mony, advancement and permanence . . .
"With citations carrying arguments that defy contradiction,
strengthened by the fact that they are in great part taken from
sources that w r ould not naturally come to the defence of Cath-
olicity, the author proceeds from one to another of the depart-
ments of life and government, showing in detail that wherever
Catholic standards have been held in honor and the sway of the
Church recognized, there has always been contentment and
progress."
* * * *
THIS old work, so useful for Catholics, so enlightening to non-
Catholics, is summarized as one "that visualizes the strength
of Catholic teaching and practice, giving the antidote to society
for its ills, and proclaiming eloquently the force and power of the
old faith which has saved the world from ruin and desolation for
the past twenty centuries."
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THE
VOL. CXIII.
SEPTEMBER, 1921
No. 678
DANTE THE MAN.
BY L. WHEATON.
ANTE shall be invaluable or of no value," asserts
Carlyle in that most beautiful chapter of all his
writings, when his subject seems to call up what
is best in himself; "for the thing that is uttered
in the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs alto-
gether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is
of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away
in swift, endless change; the inmost is the same yesterday,
today and forever," and the sage of Chelsea speaks more truly
than he knows in the apparently light use of the last words.
For the innermost truth of man is the recognition of the
supreme fact of time and eternity, the Incarnation, which
embraces all truth, all beauty, all that can be the Way, and
the Life to the exiles of earth.
Sincerity is not the crowning attribute of Dante, for sin-
cerity can consort with untruth. In this respect, Carlyle
stands as his own best illustration, for he was often sincerest
when furthest from Truth. But Dante, except in the vindic-
tiveness which mars and prevaricates the Truth by failing of
Charity, stands for its fullness in the tremendous Epic of the
Soul the Summa in glorious verse with the same Faith
that shines in the soul of the poorest unlettered peasant in
COPYRIGHT. 1921. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL, exm, 46
722 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
every part of the Catholic world of our day. For six hundred
years he has appealed to and held the interest of the Western
mind, "the central man of all the world," Ruskin calls him,
"as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral
and intellectual faculties." But this is not the reason of his
wide and secret ascendancy. Dante was no saint, no monk, no
holy ecclesiastic, who might cry from the mountain tops what
could not always be heard in the valleys and plains; he was
the great Catholic layman of his time; the typical exile, a
mere faulty pilgrim of Eternity like nous autres, and in that
capacity, and thinking only of the one important relation of
the soul to God, he imparts his own intense realization of
Truth as it is, to those who find in his vitality of faith the
heavenly wisdom which carries the soul over its frontiers
almost into that region of intellectual vision where the saints
live.
Dante's imperishable gift to the world is worth the long
and devious experiences and heartache of his troubled life;
his great message is twofold : the first comes through Beatrice,
the star he followed on his stormy voyage that the business
of life is to keep or regain Innocence; the second comes out
of his own sad memories that the price of Innocence is the
painful subdual of the human will to the Divine. The most
homesick man of all this homesick world found the place of
his rest, at last, by the common highroad of all wayfarers
thither. The entire meaning of his message is contained in
Piccarda's famous line, "In la sua volontade e nostra pace"
Considering Boccaccio as Dante's first convert, we must
forget the former's early faults, remembering that he tried
his honest best in later years to suppress the Decameron,
and forgive his utter inability to understand Dante's attitude
towards Beatrice because of our need of his story, however
gossipy and unreliable much of it may be, and also because
of his disarming humility in the Proem to his Life of Dante.
Perhaps the most familiar features that history, through
art, has preserved for us, are those of Dante. Who does not
remember in earliest childhood the grim, sardonic face with
downward sloping mouth, and disdainful expression, whose
bust or picture confronted us from the library wall a menace,
a fear, a curiosity? "The man who has been to Hell" is the
title of one such old engraving representing the man of
1921.] DANTE THE MAN 723
mystery walking through the streets of Verona, while little
children run to hide in their whispering mothers' arms. And
yet this bitter-faced poet was once a child himself, and re-
mained one in his soul throughout his stormy life. Moreover,
he loved children, and wrote tenderly and observantly about
them. But familiar as the man's face is, we find Boccaccio's
charming description of the first meeting of Dante with
Beatrice in their ninth year, vexatious in that while it says
much of the girl, it tells little of the boy. Yet we cannot do
without the story-teller's account of the historic event of the
spring of 1273.
It happened that Folco Portinari, a man of great honor
among the citizens, had assembled the neighbors in his
house to entertain them, among whom was the young man
called Alighieri, whom, since little children, especially in
places of merrymaking ar accustomed to go with their
parents, Dante not having yet completed his ninth year,
had accompanied. And here mingling with others of his
own age (for there were many such in the house of his host,
both boys and girls), the first tables being served, childishly
with the others, he began to play. There was among the
crowd of children a daughter of the above-named Folco,
whose name was Bice (although he always called her by
her full name, Beatrice), who was about eight years old,
gay and comely in her childish fashion, and in her behavior
very gentle and agreeable; with habit and language more
serious and modest than her age warranted; and besides
this, with features so beautiful and delicately formed and
full; besides mere beauty of so much candid loveliness that
many thought her almost an angel. This girl then, such as
I describe her, and perhaps even more beautiful, appeared
at the festa before the eyes of Dante, not I suppose for the
first time, but for the first time in power to create love.
And, although still a child, he received her image into his
heart with so much affection that from that day hencefor-
ward as long as he lived, it never again departed from him.
This account by Boccaccio must have been written, from
hearsay, almost a century after the event. He lived in Florence
for years, and would also have heard much of the poet from
friends in Verona and Ravenna, from his two sons Jacopo
and Pietro, themselves makers of verse and devoted to the
724 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
memory of their father, and from his youngest daughter, the
Florentine nun in the Ravenna convent who bore the illus-
trious name of Beatrice Alighieri. These three had followed
Dante into exile and to one of them, perhaps the last, he may,
in some unusual moment, have told the story of the festa.
But in the Vita Nuova he only writes:
Her dress on that day was of a most noble color, a sub-
dued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort
as best suited with her very tender age. At that moment,
I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwell-
ing in the secretest chambers of the heart, began to tremble
so violently that the least pulses of my body shook there-
with ... I say that from that time forward Love governed
my soul ... He sometimes commanded me to seek and find
if I might see this youngest of the angels, wherefore I, in
my boyhood, often went in search of her.
Dante never gives an exact description of Beatrice. He
speaks of her charm and dignity questa cortissima "that
most courteous one," "that most gentle one," "that most
modest one," who "crowned and clothed with humility went
on her way, showing no pride in what she saw or heard,"
when admiring Florentines rushed out of their houses to see
the wonder pass, in her behavior very gentle and agreeable
"with a countenance full of candor" (how he loves that
word!), but of separate features and coloring we have no hint.
He gives the look not the looks, and this is important and
unusual. Of her apparel, both in this world and the next, he
often speaks. At the famous first salutation when, after nine
years, he sees her and is saluted by her:
This most gracious being appeared to me dressed all in
pure white between two gentle ladies older than she; pass-
ing through a street, she turned her eyes thither where I
stood sorely abashed, and by her unspeakable courtesy
which is now guerdoned in the great Cycle, she saluted me
with so virtuous a bearing, that I seemed then and there to
behold the very limits of blessedness.
Again, in the Paradiso (XXX.) she is "olive crowned over
a white veil, under a green mantle, with hue of living flame."
What an artist's sense of color here, made living by Rossetti!
1921.] DANTE THE MAN 725
In the Purgatorio we see her at first veiled, stern and stately,
but in the Paradiso the gravely smiling, earthly Beatrice is
radiant with heavenly mirth: "the splendor of her laughing
eyes," 1 "Beatrice si bella e ridente." 2 But this is his nearest
approach to exact description. Gathering together his words
about her, we find the qualities he loves best an index to the
tastes of the man: courtesy, gentleness, humility, modesty,
nobility, candor, as over against the horrors of the Inferno,
where treachery and ingratitude are thrust down into the
lowest circle of everlasting ice.
But it is not so easy from Boccaccio's brief allusion to con-
jure up a picture of the boy Dante. Of his youth and middle
years we have portraits and descriptions. The youthful pic-
ture attributed to Giotto gives us a hint of the lofty sweetness
of expression which is far to seek in those later tragic ones.
Put this profile beside the grim and bitter masks and busts
of his years of exile, and one can see what life did to Dante,
or rather what he let it do.
Boccaccio writes of him at the dictation of others, for he
was only eight when the poet died:
He was of middle height; his face was long, his nose
aquiline, his jaw large, and the lower lip protruding some-
what beyond the upper; a little stooping in the shoulders;
his eyes rather large than small; dark of complexion; his
hair and beard thick, crisp and black, and his countenance
always sad and thoughtful. His garments were always dig-
nified, the style such as suited ripeness of years; his gait
grave and gentlemanlike; and his bearing whether in public
or private wonderfully composed and polished.
Villani, his neighbor in Florence days, says: "He was a little
haughty and shy and disdainful." This shyness is very notice-
able in his intercourse with Beatrice as he records it, from
that first childish encounter to his last dream of her. No
picture or bust of Dante represents him as bearded; but in
the Purgatorio in his meeting with the veiled Beatrice on the
banks of Lethe, "as children, dumb with shame, stand listen-
ing, with eyes to earth, self -confessing and repentant, such
stood I." And she said: "Since through hearing (she had
already rebuked him) thou art grieving, lift thy beard, and
more grief shalt thou receive for looking." . . . "Then at her
1 Paradiso X. 8 Paradiso XIV.
726
DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
command I lifted up my chin; and when by the beard she
asked for my face, well I knew the venom of the argument." 3
But the face of Dante has come down to us through artistic
tradition beardless, with the characteristic mouth and chin in
full relief. Reduce Boccaccio's pen picture of the great exile
and Giotto's drawing of the boy of nine, and we see a young
face, proud and tender, large, observant eyes, shy in the swift
dropping of the lids, eyes with the look in their depths of a
soul that shall know secrets sweet and terrible and tell them
with splendid truth; eyes outlooking rather than inlooking,
yet lighted by inner fires; little boyish brown hands with long,
sensitive fingers sensitive altogether this Dante as child or
man to his higher good or his undoing. The corners of the
mouth had not yet begun to droop, and he was smiling the
smile of the Vita Nuova with the light upon it "that never was
on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream."
That Beatrice was no mere allegory or idea, but a living,
breathing Florentine girl of an astonishing spiritual ascend-
ancy over others is obvious. Dante's striking personality must
have made a deep impression on anyone as good and intel-
ligent as she manifestly was. Later, her quick spiritual
perception probably fathomed the particular quality of his
love and held it sacred at its own value, nor was she slow
to show her displeasure when he fell below the high standard
of her splendid innocence. For innocence is the tabernacle
of Love Divine, and in the beautiful confusions of the Vita
Nuova where Dante speaks of Love as he, and Beatrice as she,
and then appears to identify Love with her and again with
himself, he is but telling the great truth that Love is and
dwells in the pure of heart.
The Vita Nuova, which is the story of the awakening of
Dante's soul by love, is absolutely necessary to a true under-
standing of Dante's nature. It is noticeable how he never
tears himself away from his inward life in this early work.
There is no mention of the battle of Gampaldino in which he
manfully fought, nothing of his intellectual pursuits kept up
with industry and keen interest all through his youth. Boc-
caccio tells us that he gave himself up entirely even during his
boyhood to the liberal arts and to science. Later he went to
Bologna and, after the death of Beatrice, applied himself with
Purgatorio XXXI.
1921.J DANTE THE MAN 727
avidity to the study of philosophy, "and seized by the sweet-
ness of knowing the truth about heavenly things and finding
nothing in life dearer than this, he put completely aside all
earthly cares and devoted himself entirely to it. And in
order that he might leave no part of philosophy uninvesti-
gated, his acute mind explored the most profound depths of
theology. . . . Nor was the result far distant from the pur-
pose, for without regard to heat or cold, vigils or feasts or any
other bodily discomfort, by assiduous study he came to know
whatever the human intellect can here know about the Divine
Essence." Such was Dante, intense in love and hate, and
study and war and politics. Whatever he set himself to do
or desire, that he did or desired with his whole self. But
until Beatrice's death, in 1290, the inner life was paramount.
The smallest things were of importance there: that is the
way of love. And all this was necessary to the great work of
his later life. A significant event in the Vita Nuova is told
with a touch of subtlety:
Now it fell upon a day, that this most gracious creature
was sitting where words were to be heard of the Queen of
Glory (i. e., the Church), and I was in a place whence mine
eyes could behold my beatitude, and betwixt her and me
sat another lady of pleasant favor, who looked round at me
many times, marveling at my continued gaze which seemed
to have her for its object.
The other ladies noticed it (what a thoroughly Italian scene
and plenty of piety mixed in with it too, for Dante and his
Florence loved Our Lady). Thus Dante managed to conceal
his secret, taking this lady for his screen. But he seems rather
to have overdone his feigning. Upon her leaving the city for
a time, he had occasion to go in her direction, but "not alto-
gether so far." But his heart was heavy seeing that "I left my
beatitude behind me." And, "the day being over, I wrote this
sonnet:
A day agone, as I rode sullenly
Upon a certain path that liked me not;
I met Love midway while the air was hot
Clothed lightly as a wayfarer might be.
And for the cheer he show'd, he seemed to me
As one who hath lost lordship he had got;
Advancing towards me full of sorrowful thought
728 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
Bowing his forehead so that none could see.
Then as I went, he called me by my name
Saying: 'I journey since the morn was dim
Thence where I made thy heart to be : which now
I needs must bear unto another dame.'
Wherewith so much pass'd into me of him
That he was gone, and I discern'd not how."
In the meantime, rumor was busy, and "she who was the de-
stroyer of all evil and the queen of all good, coming where I
was denied me her salutation." And then comes the beautiful
parenthesis about the effect her salutation or even the ex-
pectation of it had upon him, making him feel "that there
was no man mine enemy; and such warmth of charity came
upon me that most certainly in that moment I would have
pardoned whomsoever had done me an injury." Remem-
bering who and what the great Dante was, the delicacy and
simplicity of the passage throws a new light on his fineness.
When this beatitude was denied him he betook himself to
his chamber where he could lament unheard; "and having
prayed to the Lady of Mercies and having said also, *O Love,
aid Thou Thy servant,' I went suddenly asleep like a beaten,
sobbing child." A far cry this to the grim traveler through the
Malebolge, but in such revelations of himself we touch the
keynote to Dante's character.
Throughout his love-lit, stormy, indignant, bitter-sweet
life, Dante kept the great qualification for the kingdom of
heaven. In his faults, in his lovableness, in his deviations and
his steadfastness, in his angers and his sorrowings, in his atti-
tude towards enemy and friend, towards Beatrice and Virgil,
and towards Love itself, he was always splendidly childlike.
It is characteristic of his illustrious affection for Beatrice, her
first appearance in the little crimson dress, to the last sight
of her in the Paradiso when "she, so distant as she seemed,
smiled and looked on me, then turned her to the eternal foun-
tain.' 5 Conversely, she treated him as a beloved, but dis-
appointing boy. "Wherefore she, after a sigh of pity turned
her eyes towards me with that look a mother casts on her
delirious child." And how beautiful her rebuke to his un-
disciplined stare of rapture after his "ten years' thirst."
"Troppo fiso," too fixedly. 4
*Purgatorio XXXII.
1921.] DANTE THE MAN 729
Towards Virgil, too, Dante shows this same entrancing
side of his nature. "I turned me to the left with the trust with
which the little child runs to his mother when he is frightened
or afflicted. But Virgil had left me Virgil, sweetest Father!"
Instead of Virgil, he finds Beatrice standing queen-like in
bearing, yet stern : " 'Dante' (and this is the only time his
name is mentioned in the whole cycle of his greater works),
'for that Virgil goeth away, weep not yet, for thou must weep
for other. . . . Look at me well: verily am I, verily am I
Beatrice. How didst thou deign (the word is ironical) to
draw nigh the Innocent? Knowest thou not that here man is
happy?' Mine eyes drooped down to the fount, but beholding
me therein, I drew back to the grass, so great a shame weighed
on my brow."
Many years had elapsed between the immortal refusal of
salutation and this severe encounter, but time is not with these
two all is eternal. The sustained consistency of the story is
nowhere better illustrated. He goes on: "So doth the mother
seem stern to her child as she seemed to me; for the savor
of harsh pity tasteth of bitterness. She was silent, and
straightway the angels sang, 7n te Domine speraui.' '
How Dante spoils us for modern romance and drama,
which never get beyond an earthly close or a problem that
can only be solved by faith. It is all so futile, insipid and
feeble beside this great novel of the soul. He is the poet of
the ultimate; fierce, vindictive, disdainful and indignant as
he showed himself in his later years towards things of time,
one knows that this is only outer, passing, untrue; just as his
disdainful look is but the disguise of a quivering heart; his
real self is in the Purgatorio, the abode of contrite humility;
his sense of values has never really swerved, though his will
perhaps has turned from its difficult following. How full of
music was the soul of the poet, and how wistful and hopeful
and altogether lovely are the strains from the great liturgy
of the Church wafted through purgatorial fires to the glories
of the Paradiso, and voicing the soul of the contrite poet
himself.
Then Beatrice turns to the pitying angels who seemed, in
their sweet harmonies, to sing, "Lady, why dost thou so shame
him?" and reminds them that he is still a mortal who must
understand that "sin and sorrow must be of one measure.
730 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
This man was such in his New Life (which means the life of
the awakened soul) potentially, that every good talent would
have made wondrous increase in him."
The frustrated sanctity of this man who loved holiness
more than all things and understood its price and meaning is
apparent to the reader, as to Dante himself. But had he
been a saint we should have had no Divina Commedia, which
is a maker of saints, and it may be after all a felix culpa
that humiliation took the place of achievement. From his
knowledge of his own defects, and out of the bitterness of
failure, spiritual and temporal, out of his love and sensitive-
ness and pain and heartache sprang the inspiration which
became more and more creative as his exile taught him grat-
itude and peace. For Dante died, one can but see, a purified
soul. Catholic to the core, he was never more so than in his
giving up of life. When, as Boccaccio tells us, "having re-
ceived all the sacraments of the Church, humbly and with
devotion, and reconciled himself with God in contrition for all
he had committed against His Will as a mortal ... he ren-
dered up his wearied spirit to his Creator."
But to continue the touching scene in the Purgatorio, one
of the most informing portions of the Commedia with regard
to Dante's essential self. It tells all that there is to be told of
his sinnings and his contritions it is his own view of himself,
couched in the scathing reproaches of Beatrice. It is the self-
accusation of one who has resisted the sweet Will in which
no one knew better than Dante that peace lies.
"Some time," continues the stern one, "I sustained him
with my countenance; showing my youthful eyes to him, I
led him with me to the right goal." She goes on to make for
him a sort of general confession before the compassionate
angels, telling them that "he did turn his steps by a way not
true," and that although she gained for him "inspirations"
and tried to call him back in dreams and otherwise ("I seemed
to behold the most gracious Beatrice, habited in that crimson
raiment which she had worn when I first beheld her") "so
low sank he, that all means for his salvation were already
short, save showing him the lost people" and then, "Say, say
if this be true; to such accusation thy confession must be
joined." He is speechless with confusion, but she continues
to probe his "sad memories."
1921.] DANTE THE MAN 731
"Confusion and fear, together mingled, drove forth from
my mouth a 'Yea,' such that to understand it the eyes were
needed. As a cross-bow breaks when shot at too great tension
... so burst I under this heavy charge, pouring forth a tor-
rent of tears and sighs, and my voice died away in its pas-
sage." But she is relentless. This is not time for pity, but for
severe spiritual business, and searching questionings follow,
which he answers at length in broken accents: "Present
things with their false pleasure turned away my steps soon
as your face was hidden."
There is a sense of eavesdropping at some immortal con-
fessional in reading this part of the Purgatorio. One can
hardly bear Dante's shame, even if we apply to him his own
lines on Virgil: "O noble conscience and clear, how sharp a
sting is a little fault to thee." 5 But it is better to take him on
his own confession. He is too deep and simple and true to
prevaricate even against himself. The incident of her lifting
up his face occurs here, and in her eyes he sees reflected the
Love of Christ, and his heart breaks with contrition. He is
drawn through the waters of Lethe and, when near "the
blessed bank, 'Asperges me,' so sweetly I heard that I can-
not remember it, much less describe it." And Dante is ab-
solved and innocence regained.
To return, as we must, to the story of the Vita Nuova,
which gives the truest impression of Dante's original char-
acter before it was marred and distorted by life and by him-
self. In about 1287, Beatrice married Simone dei Bardi.
Dante makes no mention of this, but Rossetti thinks that an
allusion to a wedding where Beatrice was with certain ladies,
must refer to her as the bride. Nothing else can explain his
extreme anguish. "Of a truth I have now set my feet on that
point of life beyond the which he must not pass who would
return," he replies to one who asked him the cause of his
trouble.
Beatrice died in 1290 "when the Lord God of Justice
called my most gracious lady to Himself that she might be
glorious under the banner of that blessed Queen, Mary, whose
name had always a deep reverence in the words of holy
Beatrice."
There is a lovely little sidelight thrown upon the man, as
'Purgatorio III.
732 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
he was wont to look and act, by his own allusion to the anni-
versary of her death when,
remembering her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw
the semblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while
I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some
were standing beside me to whom I should have given
courteous welcome, and that they were observing what 1
did. Perceiving whom I arose for salutation, and said:
"Another was with me." Afterwards, when they had left
me, I set myself again to mine occupation, to wit, drawing
figures of angels.
This is the friend of Giotto and the Florentine artists of his
time. His violent weeping brought on an affection of the eyes,
very like the modern iritis, which added to his misery.
Boccaccio tells us that to dispel his grief, his family per-
suaded the poet to marry one Gemma dei Donati, probably
in 1292. There is much speculation on this marriage, but, in
all probability, there was nothing unusual about it, except
that Dante's gifts not being of the lucrative sort, in spite of
his holding public office in Florence, both husband and wife
probably had many pecuniary anxieties. Upon his exile in
1302, he left Gemma and his young children with their rich
relatives in Florence and went on his lonely way, a penniless
wanderer. There was nothing else to do, and Dante was a
man of too much courtesy and innate gentleness to make a
woman suffer needlessly; moreover, he was notably indus-
trious even in that industrious age, and would have done his
best in any case. Later on, three of his children followed
him; they must have loved him. Gemma remained in Flor-
ence with Antonia and Imperia. Her husband was a man
under sentence of death, his goods were confiscated, his repu-
tation in Florence gone. It was the sensible thing to do and,
apparently, he acquiesced. It was all, probably, very natural
and ordinary. Boccaccio's gossip can be discredited on this
matter. That Dante never mentions Gemma is part of his
natural delicacy and reserve. Neither does he speak of his sons
or little Beatrice, yet he loved children, and these were his.
To Dante there were two names that measured the whole
of life. Florence and Beatrice, or Time and Eternity. To
the first belonged all that was of his external natural exist-
1921.] DANTE THE MAN 733
ence, domestic and political responsibilties, anxieties and
strifes, exile, wanderings, misunderstandings, friendships and
hatreds. Beatrice stood for the interior world of his soul, the
supernatural. There are no complainings of his hard fate in
the Commedia, even where he shows his vindictiveness, and
that is chidden in the Purgatorio where he sees those "untying
the knot of anger.'* The few personal allusions are overborne
by the outlook of faith.
The sense of justice is the great swaying force in Dante's
later life. When it is only human, it is hindering, blind,
sterile, and, joined to his inveterate sensitiveness, destructive.
When it is on the side of the Divine, it is clear-eyed, uplifting,
wise, and raises his sensitiveness for himself to sensitiveness
for God. So in that most touching meeting of the Inferno
with Bruiietto Latini, divine justice triumphs over Dante's
poignant tenderness (and who more tender than this indig-
nant man?) for the teacher he had reverenced. "For in my
memory is fixed, and now goes to my heart, the dear and
kind, paternal image of you, when in the world, hour by hour
you taught me how man makes himself eternal." And Sir
Brunetto from his sad eternity prophecies: "If thou follow
thy star, thou canst not fail of glorious heaven if I discerned
rightly in the fair life." 6 One finds oneself reading the Com-
media as if it were fact and not the great imaginings of a rare
mind, so much is it bound up with Truth.
Dante is no poet of moods; he is the poet of faith and
conscience. Even the Vita Nuova is part of the whole. Lover
of light, as he shows himself to be in so many glorious lines,
we cannot but feel as he passes through the terrible chiaro-
scuro of those dismal circles that his soul whispers: "This,
perhaps, for me." His power of making us realize the re-
pulsiveness of sin rather than its punishment, is worked out
in the dignity with which he handles the grotesque. Ruskin
says this is the privilege of only the very great artist. But he
is in his element in the Purgatorio where the Beatitudes are
softly sung as the souls rise in grateful penitence and pain
from terrace to terrace. The great hopeless exile of earth is
at home among these exiles of hope in eternity. And what
an exile Dante was, for nineteen years wandering about Tus-
cany, often a beggar, at best, a guest! But gratitude was an
Inferno XV.
734 DANTE THE MAN [Sept.,
inherent, magnificent quality of this sorely wounded nature.
Did Can Grande lavish hospitality on the difficult high-
spirited genius? In measure, heaped down and overflowing,
was the return, as canto after canto of the Commedia reached
his princely host from that lonely spirit (lonely from the very
nature of his gifts) till all was his.
We have dwelt upon the early story of the poet, because
against that background of an affectionate, trustful nature,
the experience of that vital adventure lives by contrast in the
foreground of his later sombre years. He speaks of his "con-
version to God" in 1300, the year of the Vision, when he sud-
denly found himself in the selva oscura where no pathway
lay. But after this came his exile, matter enough for bitter-
ness even to a saint, and Dante's undisciplined sensitiveness
led him blindly for a time. There is forgiveness for sin, but
for the deliberate nursing of this human susceptibility there
is an unhappy barrier to the last surrender of the soul which
has frustrated many a saint. His life outwardly was complete
disaster, and much of it was of his own undoing.
But always standing sentinel over his unfaithful life, was
that inexorable sense of values which he called Beatrice, and
he knew pride to be a stupidity and anger a destroyer. Ever,
ever she beckoned him from the hollowness of himself
to the substantial Love. And, at last, from the Purgatorio of
treachery, betrayal and all that could wound such a nature,
he found the smile of his last happier years and the ultimate
beatitude.
"We will not complain of Dante's miseries. Had all gone
right with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior,
Podesta, or whatever they call it, of Florence, well accepted,
and the world had wanted one of the most notable words
ever spoken or sung. We will complain of nothing. A nobler
destiny was appointed for this Dante; and he, struggling like
a man towards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfill-
ing it." 7
Without his faults, his mistakes, his wounded life, with-
out the love that linked the whole together into sustained
song, without the Summa and its glorious precision of Truth
to which he was driven by his hungering soul, the Dante we
know would have been impossible. It is all as it should be.
T Carlyle.
"IL DOLCE STIL NUOVO."
A Contemplation of Dante the Poet.
BY MARGARET MUNSTERBERG.
|HEN Dante, led by his laurel-crowned guide, was
wandering on the sixth circle of Purgatory, the
penitent spirit of the poet, Bonagiunta, from
Lucca greeted the Florentine as the master of the
"dolce stil nuovo" The "sweet, new style" of
poetry had been dawning in Italy scarcely a generation be-
fore Dante's, and was now in the year 1300 glowing in its
full beauty from the pens of Dante Alighieri and his poet-
friends.
The question of a literary vogue, though it may attract
the curiosity of philologists and historians, could hardly be of
interest to us after six hundred years. But the sweetness and
the newness of this style were not mere ornamental novelties,
not, indeed, external attributes at all, but rays of a new light
from within a light that had the power to transfigure what-
ever chance object it fell upon. The sweet, new style was the
language of a new love, high and mystical, which saw in the
beloved an image of Love Eternal, and which declared that
"love and the gentle heart are both the same." A spirit-
change so profound from the gallant conventionalities that
preceded the new style must have more than a historic sig-
nificance. The new poetry of Dante's day had indeed the sig-
nificance that belongs to all immediate, original utterances of
the heart which, nevertheless, draw substance from the thought
and spiritual heritage of their age. These creations, though
born in history, yet have the strength to emerge timeless and
to remain the delight of centuries to come.
In order to understand the originality of Dante's love
poems, and ultimately of his great epic, a glance must be cast
over the poetic field in the thirteenth century. The serious
poetry read by the learned Italians of that day was in Latin.
The poet whom Dante admired as supreme was Virgil; and
with Ovid, too, we know him to have been familiar. As Latin
736 "IL DOLCE ST1L NUOVO" [Sept.,
was the language of literature, it is not surprising that Italian
men of letters used the traditional speech in its native land.
Nevertheless, bards could not be kept from singing in the
vulgar tongues. In Provence, rose the tribe of the troubadours
who have taken such a firm hold on our modern imagination
not because we still care to read their childlike lays, but be-
cause of the romance that has been woven round these almost
legendary figures. Among the singers in the "language of oc"
as Dante called the Provencal we find Bernart de Venta-
dour, Pierre d'Auvergne and the knights, Rambout de Va-
queiras, the King of Navarre and Bertrand de Born who, him-
self, became the centre of romance and song. This lively
troubadour, Dante praised in his De Vulgari Eloquentia and
met in the Inferno, where the unhappy spirit was punished
among the sowers of discord by carrying his own head "like
a lantern" in his hand. Other troubadours known to Dante
were Giraut de Borneil, called by his contemporaries "the
master of troubadours," and Arnaut Daniel, whom Dante
praised most highly and who was believed to have written
that mysterious lost novel, Lancelot, which the lovers, Paolo
and Francesca, read to their destruction. All of these trouba-
dours Dante met on different terraces of Purgatory and
greeted with the delight of a brother in song.
The forms used by the Provencal poets were the canzone,
the sonnet and the sirventese the last expressly defined by
Dante as dealing with topics other than love. Doubt and con-
troversy surround the origin of the sonnet that harp upon
which Dante and Petrarch, Shakespeare and Milton, Goethe
and Wordsworth have played, whose chords have resounded
through centuries. Though both a Provencal and a French
origin have been claimed, some scholars have been convinced
that the sonnet sprang from Italian soil. According to the
explanation of Alessandro d'Ancona, which other scholars
have followed, the sonnet rose out of a union between the
Sicilian "ottava" (abababab) and the Tuscan rispetto (aba-
bab). Yet tradition has assigned the invention of the sonnet
form to the poets, Lodovico della Vernaccia and Pier delle
Vigne. The latter poet it was whose plaintive voice arrested
Dante in that gloomy wood of the Inferno where those who
had been suicides on earth had been turned into trees, from
one of which Dante broke a twig only to be questioned : "Why
1921.] "1L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 737
do you break me?" It was Pier delle Vigne who wrote and
flourished at the cultured, but worldly, court of Frederick II.
in Sicily, where the poet enjoyed the confidence of the king,
but was finally wrongly accused of treason and killed himself
to escape infamy.
In Sicily, then, the arts were fostered, and poetry was in
flower. Yet in other parts of Italy, too, particularly in Tus-
cany and Lombardy, the Provencal muse was imitated in the
Italian vernacular. Contemporary with Pier delle Vigne was
Guittone d'Arezzo, who joined the famous Order of the Cava-
liers of St. Mary, the "Frati gaudenti," and founded the mon-
astery "degli Angeli" in Florence. Him, too, Dante met in
Purgatory, and of him the great poet says in De Vulgarie Elo-
quentia that he sang of love more through art than through
sentiment.
However imperfect the inspiration of Guittone and his
contemporaries may have been, it was highly significant to
Dante, upon whom we may look as the artistic conscience of
his day, that they wrote not in Latin, nor yet in the foreign
tongues, French and Provencal, but in their own native
Italian. This sign of a rising Italian glory in letters was so
important to Dante that he wrote a Latin treatise, De Vulgari
Eloquentia on the excellence of the vernacular for poetic use.
This is not only a dissertation on rhetoric it includes a con-
sideration of different verse-forms, of the use of metres and
words but a contribution to aesthetics. "And as to the state-
ment that every one ought to adorn his verse as far as he can,"
says the mediaeval sesthetician, "we declare that it is true; but
we should not describe an ox with trappings or a swine with
a belt as adorned, nay rather we laugh at them as disfigured;
for adornment is the addition of some suitable thing." 1
The new movement of writing poetry in Italian was not
so simple a matter as it may seem, if one considers that, as
Dante says:
Italy alone is diversified by fourteen dialects at least, all
of which again vary in themselves. . . . Wherefore, if we
would calculate the primary, secondary and subordinate
variations of the vulgar tongue of Italy, we should find that
in this tiny corner of the world the varieties of speech not
only come up to a thousand, but even exceed that figure.
1 From the English version by Ferrers Howell.
VOL. ami. 47
738 "IL DOLCE ST1L NUOVO" [Sept.,
But he has found that
the supreme standards of those activities which are gener-
ically Italian are not peculiar to any one town in Italy, but
are common to all; and among these can be discerned that
vernacular language which we were hunting for above,
whose fragrance is in every town, but whose lair is in none.
Now among the early poets of the melodious vulgar
tongue, there arose one, Guido Guinicelli by name, a Bolo-
gnese, who was destined to become the forerunner of Dante.
When Dante saw him in the purging flames of Purgatory, he
longed to run toward Guinicelli, "his father" in song, and was
only prevented by the blazing fire from embracing him. Upon
being asked by the penitent Bolognese why he showed such
affection, Dante replied: "Because of your sweet words, for
as long as the modern style will last, your writings will still
be loved."
With Guido Guinicelli, who died in 1276 when Dante
was a child of eleven the "sweet, new style" was bourgeoning.
The love songs of the troubadours and of their imitators had
been conventional, often the voices of a courtly chivalry,
which cultivated love and gallantry as a fine art. Now a new
note was sounded, which was taken up by Dante Alighieri
and several of his contemporaries and companions by his
good friends, Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, and Cino da
Pistoia, by Gianni Alfani, Guido Orlandi and Dino Fresco-
baldi. But the greatest of these was Dante. Is it because the
Divine Comedy has taken such a powerful hold on man's
imagination for six centuries that we linger also to delight in
the songs and sonnets of the poet's youthful and lyric mood,
whereas we pass by the harvest of his poet-friends? Or would
we, in any case, even without the divine gift of the Corn-
media, acknowledge Dante Alighieri as the supreme mouth-
piece of that new style which has not lost its sweetness after
six hundred years? The answer to this question can never be
given: we cannot undo history, neither can we change the
nature of our minds. As it is, we cannot do otherwise than
find in Dante's songs the pinnacle of the new movement, the
final utterance of spirit-beauty and transcendent love.
It has been customary to divide Dante's great bequest
into the Divine Comedy and the Minor Works, which include,
besides the Latin prose writings, the Vita Nuova, the Convivio f
1921.] '7L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 739
and the Canzoniere. These so-called minor works do not
deserve to be misprized. "The child is father of the man."
It is in the Vita Nuova, the most inspired love story of all the
ages, that we learn to know the poet pure and simple before
he became that complex of theologian, philosopher, moralist
and politician which has puzzled the critical scholar. For
Dante himself the little book "libello" the Italians call it-
was the golden staircase that led him to the Divine Comedy.
To this his own words bear witness. In the first canzone of
the Vita Nuova, Dante is himself spoken of in heaven as one
"who will say to the doomed in hell: 'I have seen the hope
of the blessed.' ' And in the last chapter of the Vita Nuova
the poet speaks of a vision which made him resolve "not to
speak any more of this blessed one" that is Beatrice until
he should be able to speak of her more worthily. And he
hopes that, if God grant him some more years of life, he will
"say of her what has never before been said of anyone."
The form and structure of the Vita Nuova are in them-
selves unique. The story is told in the simplest, most lucid
and charming prose, the prose of a poet; but it is interspersed
with "canzoni" and sonnets, so that we seem to hear the nar-
rator of the tender tale raise his voice in song when his subject
becomes impelling. Actually, the songs and sonnets were not
composed at the time of the prose writing, but rather at the
time of the events recorded therein, and the poet explains the
occasions that inspired the poems and their meaning.
Although the poet himself considered the "canzoni" the most
excellent of verse forms, as he declared in his De Vulgar i
Eloquentia, yet we cannot help seeing in the sonnets of the
Vita Nuova the first perfection of that complete, sustained and
measured form which was destined to become classic.
What is the New Life and its distinguishing beauty? If
we understand what the Vita Nuova is, we know also the
meaning of the "dolce stil nuovo." Dante's new life began
when an ideal love permeated his life so that all things took
on a new aspect when seen in the glow of this luminous
beauty. "One word is too often profaned for me to profane
it:" Dante's love for Beatrice was Platonic love but not as
the term is misused today. In Dante's love for Beatrice was
all the fervor of a living human love; its Platonic quality
was not a pale abstraction, not a lessening of ardor, but a
740 "/L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" [Sept.,
worship of all that is adorable focused in the adored lady of
his heart. Dante did not, indeed, love the qualities of beauty
and gentleness, but he loved Beatrice, the gentle and beautiful,
and in her he worshipped the ideal. When, in the Divine
Comedy, Beatrice finally became the heavenly guide through
Paradise, she had become identified, in Dante's mind, with
that which he believed the supreme blessing divine revela-
tion. Yet, even in the Paradiso, Beatrice is still the Beatrice
of the Vita Nuova, the lovely Florentine who died in her
youth. Whether Beatrice was, as is generally understood,
the daughter of Folco Portinari and the wife of Simone de'
Bardi, or whether, as some scholars prefer to believe, she was
unmarried, makes no difference in the tale of Dante's love.
Never does he speak as a suitor, only as worshipper, whose
utmost desire is to receive her gracious greeting. When the
gentle ladies with whom Dante holds converse in the Vita
Nuova beg him to tell them of what his happiness consists, he
answers : "In those words which praise my lady." And again
a lady asks the trembling lover: "For what end do you love
this lady, since you cannot endure her presence? Tell us, for
surely the end of such love must be something quite new."
Quite new, indeed, the end and aim of this love was destined
to be: nothing less than the supreme poem of Christian
thought !
If the Divine Comedy is the supreme homage to Beatrice,
unsurpassed in all literature for power and splendor, the
New Life has no peer for childlike tenderness and pure lyric
beauty. It is to be regretted that the little book is not more
widely circulated, that acquaintance with its unhidden sweet-
ness has been confined to Dante students. It should be en-
joyed by all simple hearts, by the young and by the youthful
of all ages. It would seem that this confession of the most
Christian poet should make a more appropriate holiday and
gift book for the reading multitude, than the jeweled cynicism
in the Rubaiyat of a Persian Hedonist!
As in the Vita Nuova we find Dante, the poet, so in the
Convivio we find rather the pedantic scholar. To us the
Convivio cannot possibly have the irresistible appeal of the
Vita Nuova. To the Dante scholar, to the historian it is full
of valuable information. It throws light on Mediaeval Philos-
ophy, on Dante's knowledge of Aristotle and the poet's Scho-
1921.] "IL DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 741
lastic interpretation of Greek thought; on his ideas in regard
to the vulgar tongue which he developed further in the De
Vulgari Eloquentia. The Convivio helps one to understand
the structure of the Paradiso, and Dante's system of Ethics;
and it contains a passage which is precious to the biographer
a passage of lament over his exile. But what inspiration
can the lover of poetry draw from the Convivio?
First, it must be considered that Dante planned to build
the Convivio round fourteen canzoni in praise of Philosophy,
even as the Vita Nuova was built round the canzoni and son-
nets of the period treated therein. Yet Dante did not carry
out the plan which he announced in the first tract of the
Convivio, and the book contains only three canzoni and four
elucidating tracts. According to Witte, the fourteen canzoni
which were originally meant to be thus used, can still be
traced in the Canzoniere, or "Book of Songs," which includes
all Dante's lyric poems. As it is, we must be content with a
prepared banquet of three canzoni: the first, an appeal to
Rhetoric: "Voi che intendendo il terzo del movete;" the second
the famous "Amor che nella mente mi ragiona," an enthu-
siastic praise of the gentle, beautiful and virtuous lady, Phil-
osophy; the third, "Le dolci rime d'amor, ch'io solia" in which
the poet turns from the praise of love to the praise of "valore"
or "virtuous worth." But significant for those who seek to
understand Dante as poet is the very fact that even in this
treatise on the delights of Philosophy the canzoni are made
the chief bearers of thought, and the prose with all its learned
exposition merely the handmaid of these songs. Such a sub-
ordination would be inconceivable in our day. It proves the
seriousness with which the art of poetry was approached, the
weight of spiritual content with which its vessels were laden,
the sacredness of the poet's mission. As in the Convivio, the
praise of Philosophy was intrusted to poetry, so the final
homage of the "divine science," Theology, and the complete
structure of a theological system was to be embodied in a
poem.
To Dante, and probably also to his colleagues, a poem
meant more than a form of utterance : it was a thing in itself
which took on individuality and became separated from the
author as soon as it was completed. This attitude is reflected
in the poet's address to his own song, which we meet again
742 "/L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" [Sept.,
and again. All three canzoni of the Conviuio end with the
blessing which the poet gives them on their way. In the
second canzone he even speaks of a sister-song "una sorella
che tu hai" which may seem contradictory to this one. Naive
and touching is the end of the first canzone. There are few
who will understand its meaning, the poet says to his spirit-
child; but if the song should come upon those who do not
seem capable of understanding, it should take comfort and
say to them: "Consider at least how beautiful I am!"
In the Vita Nuova we find the same parental tenderness
toward the poet's songs. "My gentle ballad," says its author,
as he exhorts it to go where it will be honored. The first can-
zone in the book Dante calls "the daughter of love, young and
clear." And the third canzone, a long lament for Beatrice,
he ends, addressing the song itself:
My song, so full of pity, now go weeping,
And find again the ladies and young maidens,
Those unto whom your sisters
Were wont to carry happiness, rejoicing;
And thou who art the daughter of great sorrow,
Go forth disconsolate to dwell among them.
The Canzoniere of Dante is merely a collection of all his
canzoni, ballads, sonnets and sestine which were written at
various periods of his life, including those covered by the
Vita Nuova and the Convivio. It is believed that Dante did
not himself make this collection. Yet it must have been made
early, for it is found in manuscripts which are now in libraries
of Florence, Rome, Venice, Milan, Paris, London, Oxford and
Manchester. The history of the various printed editions of
Dante's poems, beginning at the end of the fifteenth century,
need not here be given. Suffice it to say that they vary in
then* inclusiveness. Witte, for instance, in his collection of
Dante's "Lyric Poems" included the Epigrams, the Seven Peni-
tential Psalms which are paraphrases in Italian "terza rima"
the verse-form of the Divine Comedy, and, finally, Dante's
Italian "Credo." Furthermore, it is not to the point here to
consider the doubtful authenticity of several poems in the
Canzoniere, the reasons why scholars like Witte and Fraticelli
disagree, for instance, on Dante's authorship of the patriotic
canzone "O patria, degna di trionfal fama," or why certain
poems have been attributed to Dante's friends, Cino da Pistoia
1921.] "1L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 743
and Guido Cavalcanti, to his inferior and confusing name-
sake, Dante da Maiano, and to the great poet's unknown son.
In spite of doubt and contradiction, enough remains of the
Canzoniere which has been accepted and which offers further
insight into the poetic thought of the greatest Florentine.
Among the canzoni we find chiefly those that resemble
the long songs round which the Convivio was woven and
which, probably, were meant to be included in this book.
These canzoni seem elaborate, involved and intellectualized
beside the limpid, naive, inspired poesy of the Vita Naova.
Conspicuous and full of ingenious artistry are the canzoni
in which Dante plays repeatedly upon the word "pietra" or
stone. The conjectures in regard to this rock are character-
istic of the varying interpretations of the poet's veiled mean-
ing. The "pietra" poems were written in that , period of
Dante's life which was under the sway of Philosophy. Now
this lady, Wisdom, cannot be lightly wooed. She must be won
by arduous effort, even determined and laborious pursuit of
difficult studies. It is, therefore, not surprising that the poet
should call this lady hard and pitiless as stone. Indeed, in
the second canzone of the Convivio he refers to a sister can-
zone which, by calling the beloved lady cruel and disdainful,
seems to contradict the song of her praise. This natural inter-
pretation is followed by Witte, but contradicted by those
commentators who look upon Dante's years following the
death of Beatrice not only as devoted to philosophic studies,
but as distracted by different earthly passions. The Pietra
of the "stone poems," according to them, was a hard-hearted
lady who had enkindled the poet's ardor; and other poems
of that period were addressed to other ladies.
It is to this period of disloyalty that Beatrice is believed
to refer her reproaches against Dante in the Purgatorio.
Further, some poems are supposed to have been inspired by
friends whom Dante was known to have had during the
period of his exile, among them Gentuccha of Lucca. For us
who seek the living poetry, it is not essential to know the facts
and causes that brought about this precious and still undi-
minished life. We shall not linger long over the didactic odes
the precursors of the vigorous comments on prevailing
morals in the Divine Comedy nor over the artful sestine in
which the poet shows himself the perfect virtuoso. We shall
744 "IL DOLCE STIL NUOVO" [Sept.,
listen for that music which resounds the lucid strains of the
Vita Nuova, strains which, we believe, must have been in-
spired by Beatrice, giver of blessings for all time.
In spite of Dante's greater admiration for the canzone, it
is in the sonnets rather than in the canzoni of the "Book of
Songs" that we find the magic of pure poesy. In these delicate
vessels of fourteen lines lives that spirit which, by its youth-
fulness, defies centuries. There is one sonnet in which this
spirit breathes unmistakably one which Carducci empha-
sized as characteristic, which RoseUi illustrated, and which
has been given much praise. Dante addressed this sonnet to
Guido Cavalcanti, to whom he alludes in the Vita Nuova as
his best friend (primo amico). The other friend to whom
he refers in the sonnet is the poet, Lapo Gianni, and the ladies
are respectively the beloved of Guido and Lapo and Dante's
Beatrice. What young and wistful soul with an imagination
that delights in sailing away from the dross of daily affairs
on far, enchanted seas would not in our own day utter the
same wish so natural, so youthful, so appealing to the
friend of his heart, that Dante sent to Guido over six hundred
years ago! The sonnet may thus be rendered in English:
Guido, I would that you and Lapo and me
Some powerful enchantment soon would seize
And place upon a boat that at each breeze,
To suit your whim and mine, would skim the sea.
And no misfortune and no ills that be
Could set an obstacle against our ease.
What pleases one, the other too would please,
And this delight would grow upon us three.
And Lady Vanna and Lady Lagia, too,
With her o'er whom the sacred numbers glow
The good enchanter with us would conveigh.
And there we should discourse of love all day,
And each of them such sweet content would know,
As, I believe, would Lapo, I and you.
In the Convivio Dante has set forth the fourfold way in
which his canzoni in honor of Philosophy should be under-
stood. The poet's own exposition is significant because the
same method of interpretation must be applied to the Divine
Comedy. The four senses in which a poem of import and rich
1921.] "7L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 745
meaning must be read are the literal, the allegorical, the
moral and the anagogical that is the metaphysical or spir-
itual sense. The extraordinary union of these four points of
view must be kept in mind and the more capable one is of
adopting this fourfold interpretation, the better one will be
able to penetrate the infinite depths and to enjoy the unique
beauties of the divine poem.
Dante believed in a real heaven and a real hell, and
he believed that the real men and women whom he had
known, whose kin he was meeting on the streets of Florence,
were really suffering in the fiery depth of the earth,
were really doing penance on the steep mountain of Purgatory
or were really steeped in music and light, adoring the sempi-
ternal rose. Without this belief in the reality of those realms
of which he had so clear and bright a vision, he could not
have reproduced it with such unfailing exactness, nor have
given it to the world with such irresistible power.
The allegorical aspect of the Divine Comedy is not hard
for us to follow, as it is the natural modern tendency to lay
overdue emphasis on the symbolism of Dante's vision. And
yet how marvelously this symbolism is carried out! Every
punishment in hell expresses the horror and torment inherent
in the sin itself.
In Purgatory the allegorical aspect is even more obvious.
The penance, willingly performed, is on every terrace a sym-
bolic opposite of the sin from which it is to cleanse the peni-
tent. The lean band of the gluttonous fast while the sweet
scent of fruits entices them. The envious those who have
been guilty of "invidia" or perverted sight have their closed
eyelids sewn to their faces with threads of iron.
Most of all the poet's guides must be understood both
literally and symbolically: Virgil, the incarnation of that
classic heritage of thought and art which Dante so revered,
and Beatrice, the revelation of the Divine. Yet every char-
acter, every creature, every material object that the pilgrim
meets on his unearthly journey has some allegorical sig-
nificance.
The third dimension of the divine poem is the moral.
The stupendous moral power of the Divine Comedy is due s in
the first place, to the infallible clearness and justice of Dante's
ethical conception, and, in the second place, to the genius of
746 "1L DOLCE ST1L NUOVO" [Sept.,
his poetry. The same morality and it is after all the estab-
lished Christian morality if set forth in tracts, in sermons or
the crude allegories which appeared in subsequent centuries,
could never have made such an indelible impress on men's
hearts.
The stern justice of Dante which resulted from his firm
belief in the seriousness of Christian morality, was, however,
tempered by a marvelously sympathetic insight. Though he
hated the sin, he often loved the sinner. He could not do
otherwise than delegate great men, geniuses and princes whom
he admired, to their proper circles of the Inferno or upon the
terraces of Purgatory where they belonged, because it was not
his own inclination or private judgment that placed them
there, but the justice of that moral law before which he
bowed. Yet the poet's eye penetrated the motives that led to
the baneful deeds and graded the punishments according to
the greater or lesser evil of these motives. It is characteristic
that those who erred through weakness, through the inordinate
love of things good in themselves, are in the first circles of
hell, where the torments are less severe, and that the violent,
the fraudulent, and, finally, the treacherous, are subjected to
the most frightful suffering. In Purgatory, too, the sins are
measured even as they were inspired by lack of love, by dis-
torted love, by defective love, or, lastly, by excessive love
which brings about the more pardonable sins of the senses.
Indeed, love which rules the world is also made the centre
of morality. The greater the departure from this glorious
and blessed centre, the more accursed is he who thus departs.
The fourth dimension in which the Divine Comedy must
be viewed is the anagogical or spiritual. Here it may be said
that there is not a syllable in the whole poem which has not a
spiritual or religious meaning. It is characteristic of med-
iaeval thought that even science was theological. The struc-
ture of Heaven with its graded spheres and their planets and
stars, of the earth with Jerusalem at one pole and Purgatory
at the other, was determined by its religious significance.
But far more important is the inseparability of morality and
religion. A distinction between these two forces which we
are accustomed to see made in our day, would have been in-
conceivable to Dante. The distance from love which causes
sin, is at the same time and essentially a departure from
1921.] "/L DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 747
Divine Love. Even so Beatrice, the heavenly guide who leads
the pilgrim soul onward where Virgil's guidance must cease,
has become Revelation, the only true giver of blessings.
Though the spiritual meaning is present throughout the
Divine Comedy, it is in the Paradiso that it shines most un-
mixed with remembrances of earthly shadows. It is in Para-
dise that all souls, even those which appear in the lower
spheres, are content.
Now as the mighty poem lies before us, viewed in its four
dimensions the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the
spiritual the question presents itself: wherein lies the great-
ness of the divine epic? It is not in any one of these four
aspects, but in the extraordinary harmonization of all four.
It is not Dante the chronicler, or Dante the symbolist, the
moralist, or even the theologian, whom we admire, but Dante
the poet. For the poet alone can present the soul's life vivid,
complete.
It is to Dante as poet that the greatest homage is due in
this hour of six centuries' remembrance. There are, to be
sure, other aspects beside the poetical poetical in the all-
inclusive sense which make the Divine Comedy a valuable
document. The present writer was asked recently if Dante's
mind had not been so filled with political prejudice that his
poem amounted practically to a political pamphlet. Political
passion, to be sure, was not wholly cooled when Dante wrote
his cantos; but such passion was subordinated to the stern
justice of the moralist and, what is more important for us, to
the clear understanding of the poet. For the historian, no
doubt, the Divine Comedy is full of precious first-hand ma-
terial: it is an autobiography the like of which has never
since been known. Further it is the most illuminating pre-
sentation of mediaeval thought. The philosophy, the science,
the literature of the thirteenth century may all be studied
here: the procession of public characters and men of letters
met in the Inferno and on Purgatory in itself makes the
Divine Comedy a great historical and literary encyclopedia.
Such passages, moreover, as the invective against the frivolous
Florentine women give a better insight into the manners and
morals of Dante's day than volumes of history.
But is it for his contribution to historical knowledge that
Dante has been a name to conjure with? It is not historians
748 "IL DOLCE ST1L NUOVO" [Sept.,
that have power over the hearts and the imaginations of
generations of men, but prophets and poets. Nor would the
Divine Comedy deserve all the veneration bestowed upon it,
if it were not a living, throbbing drama with passions, griefs
and joys as true today as in the thirteenth century. The
greatest epic poet entered into the heart of each of his monu-
mental characters with the penetration of the greatest dra-
matist, How perfect was his understanding of the distin-
guished pagans in the Limbo or ante-hell, those virtuous, but
unblessed spirits whose sorrow is the knowledge that they will
never see salvation! "Desire without hope" how universal
a state is this, how truly the poet has known its bitterness!
Dante, who had the father of painters, Giotto, for a
friend, was himself a master portrait painter in his own
medium of Italian verse. Universally known is his descrip-
tion of the heretic Farinata degli Uberti, who "towered above
with breast and forehead as if he held all hell in great con-
tempt." But not tragic figures only did the poet portray. No
picture could be more charming, more innocently joyful than
Dante's first glimpse of Matilda, the lovely guardian of the
earthly Paradise as she goes singing and picking flowers along
the river of forgetfulness. Here Dante, the poet, outshines all
troubadours in his tribute to spring and flowers and loveliness,
and in this song of Eden we find again the youthful Dante of
the innocent heart, the Dante of the Vita Nuova.
In the Inferno Dante is tragic, human, penetrating and
dramatic; in the Purgatorio he has added to these traits the
sweetness of hope and the Eden-charm of innocence and joy.
But in the final cantos of the Paradiso the poet has tran-
scended poetry: "the indescribable, here it is attained." In
his utter humility, the pilgrim soul, face to face with refulgent
bliss, reiterates the powerlessness of his own speech to trans-
mit the overpowering beauties. And even as he does so, his
speech turns to music. "O luce eternal" we hear the poet of
poets cry out; and in his ecstasy the hope of all Christianity is
jubilantly fulfilled. Dante beholds the mystic rose where
Mary, Queen of Heaven, is enthroned among the blessed,
where Beatrice, still granting him her smile, has her everlast-
ing seat and where the multitudes of angels fly eternally from
God to the blessed and from the blessed to God. Dazzled by
the stupendous glory of the Trinity, the poet is overwhelmed;
1921.] "IL DOLCE STIL NUOVO" 749
and yet he feels his will and his desires moved with the even
motion of a wheel by "Love who moves the sun and other
stars."
What does all this fervor and this beauty mean to us after
six hundred years especially to those of us who do not speak
the language of the "sweet, new style?" There is no reason
why the poetry of Dante should not mean as much to us as to
the contemporaries of Dante. In a way, it might mean even
more : for we are in a position to know, as they could not, that
there has been none greater than the poet of the thirteenth
century. Our contact with him today can be only a question
of the right approach.
The Divine Comedy chiefly, but also the minor works of
Dante have been translated by poets of the first rank into the
main languages of modern Europe. To these poets infinite
thanks are due.
Not long after the death of Dante Alighieri, a Professor-
ship was established for the exposition of the Divine Comedy.
This post was held by Boccaccio, the father of a long line, a
veritable multitude of Dante commentators. In the fourteenth
century public chairs for Dantology were founded at Florence,
at Pisa, at Bologna, at Venice, at Plaisance. According to
Witte, the interpretations of the earliest commentators,
chiefly Boccaccio, Benvenuto de Imola and Francesco da Buti
have strongly influenced later interpreters. Yet, obviously,
the later the interpreter, the wider a tradition he has at his
disposal; and neither repetition nor contradiction is fruitless,
as long as it serves to deepen intimacy with the almost inex-
haustible poem. Especially the nineteenth century with its
romantic revival, its return to the primal forces of intellectual
life, has produced zealous Dante scholars of the first degree.
Again, the learned commentators have worked in all coun-
tries of the western world. We find among many distin-
guished colleagues, the Italian D'Ancona, Trivulzio, Garducci,
Gesari, Giuliano and Fraticelli, the French Ozanam, the Swiss
Scartazzini, the German Witte, Kannegiesser, Forster and
Wegele, the English Lord Vernon, Moore, Rossetti, and the
American Charles Eliot Norton.
There has been a tendency to deride somewhat the faith-
ful study of commentators, as if, by entangling one's self in
the network of their interpretations, one were sure to miss the
750 '7L DOLCE ST1L NUOVO" [Sept.,
shining kernel itself. Such scorn is a fallacy. In the first
place, the devoted scholars have smoothed the way for us : by
laborious examinations of manuscripts they have assumed the
responsibility of providing us with authentic texts; through
their philological and historical studies they have cleared
away the obstacles presented by language, by obsolete expres-
sions, by traditions and conceptions Scholastic, astrological
or political which seem to us foreign and remote. In the
second place, a great work of art not only quickens the spirit
directly, but scatters seed broadcast which bring forth fruit,
some a hundredfold, some a thousandfold. The imagination
of Dante has kindled a multitude of other imaginations; his
light shines diffused through centuries into numberless places,
and, though it be seen through seven veils, is yet his light.
Not every eye can look straight at the sun: "by the reflected
light we have our life."
In this hour of remembrance, then, there is not one among
us who lives in the world of poetry and Christian thought,
to whom some small ray of that strong light has not pene-
trated, however little he may be aware of its source. And
whether we be among the receivers of reflected light or
among those who sun themselves directly in the poet's glory,
we cannot but unite in gratitude to the Florentine who, on the
banks of the Arno, first beheld his eternal Beatrice and raised
his voice in the "sweet, new style."
DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER. 3
BY RT. REV. WILLIAM TURNER, D.D.,
Bishop of Buffalo.
Y a strange irony of fate, Dante's great poem has
come to be viewed by posterity in a way that
confuses with singular infelicity the true per-
spective of the interests to which the poet wished
to appeal. For some, the Diuina Commedia is
primarily political. For others, its artistic excellence is its
paramount perfection. For the spiritually minded it is the
fullest, richest, and most inspiring religious document that
the Ages of Faith have bequeathed to us. For almost all mod-
ern readers the intense human interest in the poem is its chief
attraction. To very few, comparatively, does it appeal as a
philosophical work, the product of a mind truly philosophical.
Yet, it was the philosophical interpretation of the poem that
Dante himself esteemed to be of the greatest importance. In
his Dedicatory Epistle to Can Grande della Scala, prefixed
to the Paradiso, he tells us that the hidden sense of the poem
is moral philosophy, the scope of which he defines in the
words of the Second Book of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
Dante, has, indeed, been fully avenged for the wrongs
he suffered at the hands of his Florentine fellow coun-
trymen. The exile has come to his own at last. In "the sacred
poem to which heaven and earth have set their hand," 2 he has
achieved the renown for which his heart yearned. He who,
like the Man of Sorrows Himself, had not where to lay his
head, has built up in his own way a mansion wherein the great
minds of posterity have found a home. He who experienced
how bitter is the bread of the stranger, now offers food to the
multitude of obscure and illustrious alike who seek the bread
of the word. He who knew how hard it is to go up and down
the stairways of foreign houses, has drawn all generations of
men to tread with him the steps that lead down to suffering
and direful woe, to ascend with him the path of purgatorial
penance, and at last by the golden stairways of Paradise to
1 This article is reprinted from The Catholic University Bulletin, April, 1910.
*Paradiso XXV., 1, 2.
752 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
attain to endless joy and the blessed immortality. 3 But, while
he has thus drawn to him the modern world, he still protests
as pathetically as of old:
O ye who have undistempered intellects
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses. 4
One reason for the failure to recognize Dante as a philos-
opher is the fact that he was so obviously a theologian. His
sacred poem has been described as "Aquinas in Verse;" it is,
indeed, a summary of Catholic theology. Even his contem-
poraries recognized his claim in this regard. The epitaph
composed by Giovanni del Virgilio calls him "Dante the theo-
logian," and a tradition dating from Boccaccio's time repre-
sents him as having obtained his degree in theology at the Uni-
versity of Paris, but without having been formally inaugu-
rated because he was unable to defray the expenses incidental
to that ceremony. But, even if he did obtain his degree in
theology, if he did sit at the feet of Siger who
"Reading lectures in the Street of Straw
Did syllogize invidious verities," 5
that did not prevent him from being a philosopher as well as
a theologian. Like his master, St. Thomas of Aquin, he could
lay claim to the double distinction. Indeed, the epitaph just
quoted confers on Dante this twofold honor:
Dante theologian, skilled in all the lore
Philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom.
In his day the two sciences were distinguished, without being
separated from each other. Reason was divine; revelation
was reasonable; there could, therefore, be no contradiction
between theology, which treated of revealed truth, and phil-
osophy, which relied on human reason alone. The theologian
was a philosopher, and the philosopher was almost invariably
a theologian.
Again, it is urged that Dante expressed his contempt for
philosophy. In the Inferno* he makes a demon boast of being
a logician. Dante, however, was not always just to his
enemies; and if his allusion is to be taken as reflecting on the
CA Ozanam, Dante and Catholic Philosophy (New York, 1897), p. 46,
* Inferno IX., 61, 63. Paradise X., 136, 138. Inferno XXVII., 122, 123.
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 753
logicians of his time, it simply shows that he did not approve
their methods in logic. He himself was not above the use of
rigid logical formulas, as is evident from the Vita Nuova, the
Conuivio and De Monarchic!.
The passage which is, to all appearance, the most serious
arraignment of philosophy is the well known speech of Virgil
in Purgatorio III., 34, 45. The heathen poet having led Dante
to the Mount of Purgatory and seeing how his companion is
bewildered at the novel spectacle, turns and says to him:
"Insane is he who hopeth that our reason
Can traverse the illimitable way
Which the One Substance in Three Persons follows!
Mortals, remain contented at the quia;
For if ye had been able to see all,
No need were there for Mary to give birth;
And ye have seen desiring without fruit
Those whose desire would have been quieted,
Which evermore is given them for a grief.
I speak of Aristotle and of Plato,
And others many" and here he bowed his head
And more he said not, and remained disturbed.
The passage rightly understood, far from being an ar-
raignment of philosophy, is a vivid and thoroughly human
presentation of the legitimate claims of reason. Like the early
Christian Apologists, and following the example of the great-
est of the Schoolmen, Dante pictures the pagan world as long-
ing for the light of Eternal Truth which Christ first shed on
man. Virgil himself had shared this longing. Like Plato and
Aristotle he had naturally aspired to know the whole truth;
with them he had shared the desire "which evermore was
given them for a grief." He had had a faint feeling that the
dawn of supernatural revelation was approaching, when Faith
should shed its effulgence over the realm of supernatural
truth, and the mystery of the Triune God should become an
acquisition of human knowledge. Because he was denied that
vision he bowed his head in grief "and more he said not, and
remained disturbed." The pagan world had penetrated the
deepest truths of the natural order; it had discovered the
facts, but could not penetrate the mysterious reasons of exist-
ence. Had it been able to do so, Christ had not needed to
VOL. cxiii. 48
754 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
come. For these, therefore, who live in the light of Christian
Revelation there are two worlds of truth. The one was known
to Plato and to Aristotle: it is the world of philosophy. The
other is known only to Christian believers: it is the world of
faith, the realm of theological speculation. The second com-
pletes and rounds out the first. In the world of faith, is satis-
fied that desire "which evermore was given as a grief." He is
"insane" who would confound the two orders of truth, and
hope by unaided reason to reach the heights of supernatural
faith. Thus does Dante set limits to philosophic inquiry.
Within those limits he recognizes that reason may satisfy its
natural longing, understand its own world, and discover
therein a natural knowledge of God.
"Philosophy," he said, "to him who heeds it
Noteth, not only in one place alone,
After what manner Nature takes her course
From Intellect Divine and from its art." 7
How, then, does Dante avail himself of this privilege?
What is his manner of philosophizing? Broadly speaking,
there are but two methods in philosophy, two ways of achiev-
ing the philosopher's task. The one is the Aristotelian, the
other the Platonic. The Aristotelian method begins and ends
with knowledge. Its starting point is intellectual reflection,
its goal is scientific explanation. The Aristotelian philosopher
seeks the noumenon in the phenomenon, the universal in the
particular. He traces effects to their highest causes. He sees
the beautiful, and he analyzes it. He discovers the good, the
noble, the sublime, and he submits them to logical discussion.
He is ever and always asking why? and the answer, if it satis-
fies his mind, satisfies his soul. The Platonic method begins
with wonder and ends in contemplative love. Its starting-
point is the appreciation of the beautiful; its goal is intuition
of the highest beauty. The Platonist seeks the ideal beautiful
in the particular and imperfect manifestations of it. He does
not go back from effect to cause, but upward from the ma-
terial, the changeable, the sense-bound, the imperfect to the
immaterial, the immutable, the spiritual, the perfect. He dis-
covers the beautiful, but, instead of analyzing it, he loses him-
7 Inferno XI., 97, 99.
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 755
self in admiration. He encounters the good, the noble, the
sublime hidden in the shadow representations of them in the
world of experience, and he is thereby carried in thought to
that other world which is above us, the home of the really
good, the truly sublime, the ideally perfect. For him expe-
rience is always more than experience: it is a visitation from
another and a better world. For him the reason why a thing
is, is a secondary consideration, subordinate to the uplifting
and spiritually regenerative value of all knowledge.
Now, both these tendencies, the Aristotelian and the Pla-
tonic, may be present in one and the same mind. They are not
so far apart as one may at first sight imagine. Each in its
own way seeks the permanent in the world of change. The
searchlight of knowledge is thrown on the whole field of
human experience in order to reveal the permanent intel-
lectual element. That is Aristotelianism. The whole world of
experience is made to pass through the glowing furnace of
personal feeling in order that it may be purified of the dross,
and only the pure gold of spiritual sentiment remain. That is
Platonism. The machinery, so to speak, is different, but the
task is essentially the same. The manner is different, the
style is different cold, clear, exact, scientific determination
in the one case; warm, rich, free poetic expression in the
other yet the aim is fundamentally identical, and the result
is also identical. For the true is the beautiful, and the per-
manently beautiful is the eternally true. In God, Whom both
the Aristotelian and the Platonist ultimately attain, each in his
own way, both find the goal of all philosophical activity.
Infinite Thought and Infinite Love, Absolute Truth and Eter-
nal Beauty.
Both these tendencies were strong in Dante. That he was
an Aristotelian almost goes without saying. His whole intel-
lectual world was Aristotelian. His mind was endowed with
abundant talent for scientific accuracy and correctness of de-
tail. The mold in which education fashioned him was
scientific in the Aristotelian sense. The stuff out of which his
thoughts were woven with such wonderful skill, the raw
material, so to speak, of his poem, was Aristotelian. For him
Aristotle was, in his own grand phrase, "the master of those
who know." So naturally do his thoughts seek expression
in the formularies of Aristotelian philosophy that when, in
756 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
the upper circles of heaven he is asked by St. John the Evan-
gelist to give an account of the most distinctive Christian vir-
tue, Charity, he answers without the least suspicion of incon-
gruity, in the very words of the First Book of Aristotle's Meta-
physics* Human reason, which is his guide through the lower
regions, is, indeed, typified by Virgil. Patriotic considerations
compelled him to do this, and a strong personal devotion to
the legendary, rather than the historical, conception of the
Latin poet's relation to Christianity. If it were not for these
considerations he might have taken the Stagyrite instead of
the Mantuan for his guide. At any rate, the explanations
which he puts in the mouth of his leader are often almost
verbally taken from the works of the Greek philosopher.
Dante knew his Aristotle. Though he depended on imperfect
translations, he seized the spirit of the philosopher better
than many a modern scholar who studies the original text.
"The glorious philosopher to whom Nature, above all others,
disclosed her secrets" 9 was for him the final court of appeal
in all questions of purely natural knowledge.
But while this is undoubtedly true, and admitted by all, it
is not less true that Dante was a genuine Platonist. His first
hand acquaintance with Plato's teaching was, no doubt,
meagre enough. Nevertheless, he must have known some-
thing of the doctrines of the Timseus, which was accessible in
a translation. He was familiar with the Consolations of Phil-
osophy by the Christian Platonist, Boethius. He was fond of
quoting St. Augustine's City of God and the Confessions.
From Cicero he gleaned a knowledge, not always accurate, of
the doctrines of Plato. But more serviceable far than all these
sources was his own spiritual experience, from which, like
many before and since his time, he drew his Platonic inspira-
tion. Although he had no immediate knowledge of Plato's
works, he had in his own soul an intimate source, a rich
fountain of Platonic thought. In fact, his whole life is a vivid,
though pathetic, commentary on Platonism. From the mo-
ment when, at an early age, he began to be a lover of the
beautiful, until the day when he put the last touch to the
sacred poem wherein she whom he had first loved was hon-
ored as no woman before her had been honored, 10 his spirit
Paradise XXVI., 37 ff. Convivio III., 5 ; Oxford edition, p. 277.
10 Vita Nuova, n. 43. Oxford edition, p. 233.
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 757
had undergone the Platonic purgatorial process of personal
suffering. His mind had passed through the discipline of
pagan philosophy and classic culture. His soul had been chas-
tened by penance and Christian piety. He had been rescued
from the "wildering wildwood," the "selva salvaggia" by faith
and repentance. It is, unfortunately, more than a figure of
speech to say that, in his case,
The passionate heart of the poet
Was whirled into folly and vice.
Through it all he had preserved his ideal. Troubadour and
Platonist that he was, he worshipped at the shrines of false
divinities, but kept ever in his heart the ideal of spiritual
beauty, to which at last he was able to give his undivided al-
legiance. Had he continued to dwell in the region of primary
experience, he might, like Petrarch, have become a sweet
singer in whose song one personal note would recur in varied
cadence. But, he did not choose to do so. Being a Platonist,
he could not. He made his first vision of the beautiful to
serve a higher purpose. He cultivated the spiritually beautiful
as the aim of all his thoughts. He sought the higher beauty
in all the vagaries of his own fancy, and the record of his
search is the Vita Nuova and the Conuivio. Then he planned
a still wider search. He sought it beyond his own real expe-
rience. In his imaginary journey through all the world of
spirits, he reviewed all history and all science, seeking every-
where the same Beauty, and finding it at last in God, to the
footsteps of Whose throne he was led by Beatrice, the type of
Divine Revelation. In this way, by searching for the nou-
menal, or permanent, beauty amid the phenomena, or "imi-
tations" of it in the world of human experience, Dante became
a Platonist, a profoundly personal Platonist. His journey,
which began in the "selva oscura," and ended in the vision of
Eternal Truth and Beauty, was no irrelevant excursion into
the region of fancy. It was a deliberate attempt to interpret
all human life, not only in terms of enlightenment, but also in
terms of disciplined emotion. It was a quest of the beautiful,
as well as of the true. By personal feeling, therefore, and by
his own spiritual development more than by the study of
books, Dante became a philosopher-poet, after the manner of
the poet-philosopher. As an Aristotelian, he aimed at scien-
758 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
tific determination of the actual in terms of essences and
causes. As a Platonist, he ranged up and down the universe
of human thought and feeling, seeking an interpretation of
the actual in terms of the ideal.
In becoming a philosopher of this Platonic type, Dante
did not cease to be a poet. On the contrary, his philosophy
elevated his poetry to a higher degree of artistic excellence.
Poetry, when it is merely a play of fancy, without any refer-
ence to the serious purposes of life, and without relevance to
spiritual values is, indeed, poetry, but it is poetry in the most
elementary stage of development. Poetry, which to the pri-
mary pleasantness that comes from its response to the de-
mands of the ear, adds the deeper beauty which consists in
response to the demands of the soul, is poetry in its highest
and best form. I do not mean, of course, that poetry, in order
to be perfect, must be didactic. What I mean is that poetry
is lacking in the supreme quality if it is not philosophical.
And I use the word "philosophical" as Aristotle uses it in his
famous saying that poetry is "more philosophical than his-
tory." History neglects no detail of human experience. It
reproduces human life with all its circumstances. Poetry
passes over many circumstances as being trivial or unmean-
ing, and submits the residue to the discipline of harmonious
expression. Though, in one sense, poetry sees less than his-
tory, in another sense it sees more; for it sees more deeply.
It sees the soul behind the silhouette; it hears the music of the
voice behind the silent record of historic sayings. It interprets
not only in terms of truth, as the higher kind of history does,
but also in terms of artistic feeling and articulate emotion.
In a word, it philosophizes. For, the warp and woof of the
silken web which the poet weaves is human experience, in
which, like the philosopher, he seeks the permanent amid the
fluctuating events. So that in ultimate analysis the business
of the poet and that of the philosopher are in part identical.
In this sense the Commedia has a transcendent philo-
sophical quality which other poems possess, either not at all
or only in a lesser degree. No one would deny that there is
in the Homeric songs a system as well as a story. Homer has
his definite ideas of the gods and heroes, of heaven and earth,
and the shadowy underworld, of man and those things about
which man is chiefly concerned. Those ideas, simple, naive,
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 759
childlike, are eternally beautiful and eternally human.
Therein lies their charm. But they are admittedly unsatis-
fying to the developed mind. The Homeric world is such a
world as children's fancy might construct; childish, perhaps,
rather than childlike. There is in the Homeric conception of
existence no reflectiveness, no serious sense of sin, no reali-
ization of the need of purification and penance. The religion
is a fair weather religion, full of sunshine and gladness, the
religion of a people who have not yet felt the deeper spiritual
needs which a wide knowledge of even this world arouses.
This defect the Greek himself discovered later, when he came
to realize through the insight of the tragic poets and the phil-
osophers that there is within us something above nature,
something which the beautiful, natural creations of the Olym-
pic world do not satisfy; and from the moment that that dis-
covery was made, the religion of Homer could no longer
respond to the spiritual needs of the Greek people. Again,
the Homeric conception of religion, while it was artistically
rounded out, was fragmentary, from the philosophical point
of view. The cultus of each deity was practical, local and,
therefore, particular. Whatever underlying principle there
was, such as personification of nature, remained vague, doubt-
ful, incoherent. When, now, we turn to Dante, we find an
infinitely wider range. In his own words, he "leads all wan-
derers safe through every way," 11 through sin, suffering, pen-
ance and purification, to the final joys of the Blessed. If we
accompany him we are not always in the sunshine, but pass
from deepest shadow through penumbra into light eternal.
And through all our journey we are guided by a definite sys-
tem, the rational content of which is satisfying to the reflect-
ing mind.
In Faust we have the direct opposite of what we find in
the Iliad. In the Homeric poems all is objective: in the great
modern drama there is preponderance of subjectivity. Indeed,
the modern world feels too keenly the subjective aspect of
sin and suffering. Its philosophy is too poignantly personal.
Thus, the Weltschmerz, the tragedy of the world and of
human iniquity is the all too sombre theme of Goethe's mas-
terpiece. It is true, poetry thus gains in richness, fullness and
reflectiveness. But even from the artistic point of view the
u Inferno I., 17.
760 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
gloom is too dense. Neither the poet nor his audience can
penetrate the curtain of subjective feeling that hangs like a
mist upon the scene. To the great questions which man is
ever asking concerning his own destiny and the meaning of
life, there is no answer except Heine's sneer,
Bin Narr wartet auf Antwort.
Life is an enigma, which the poet does not solve; because he
cannot. Here, too, the onesidedness of the poet's philosophy
hampers the action of the poem, and is a defect even from the
point of view of art.
If we turn now to Shakespeare, we find a still more inter-
esting problem. Shakespeare, like Dante, swings around the
whole circle of human experience in search of material. Like
Goethe, he is reflective, but unlike him, he is objective as well
as subjective. With him, action dominates feeling, as it ought
to. He sees, he feels, he reflects, he analyzes, but when he
comes to reflective reconstruction his work remains fragmen-
tary and incomplete. This is not because he is a dramatist,
but because his mind is powerless to dominate the whole
world of human experience: he does not conquer his world;
it conquers him. Like a sailor who would start to sea without
compass or chart, he is soon lost in the limitless expanse of
human experience.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more : it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare can rise to the sublimest heights of religious
feeling. He is always respectful, and can be even tenderly
reverential in his illusions to Christ and Christianity:
Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black pagans, Turks and Saracens;
And, toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,
Under Whose colors he had fought so long.
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 761
He is a philosopher, too, as is evident from the study of his
Sonnets. In the plays, also, his extraordinary power is no-
where more remarkable than in the ease and sureness with
which he disentagles the actuating principle from the mass of
fluctuating and confusing details of human characters and
human institutions. He possesses in a high degree the philo-
sophical gift of finding the essence in its accidental setting.
Indeed, some critics go so far as to assign him a place among
the Scholastics. "He is a distincting Thomist," writes Father
Bowden, "on the following points: his doctrine of the genesis
of knowledge and its strictly objective character; the power of
reflection as distinctive of rational creatures; the formation of
habits, intellectual and moral; the whole operation of the
imaginative faculty." 12 Nevertheless, he is weakest where
Dante is strongest. He is lacking in totality of vision : he fails
to grasp all reality, dominate it, and articulate into his con-
ception of it those fragments of philosophy which are unex-
celled for depth of insight and breadth of sympathy. Only
those who are weary of the world problems, who are content
with a restatement of them without a solution, who are ready
to cry out in protest against sustained constructive effort in
philosophy are satisfied with Shakespeare and hail him as
their prophet. His message is gospel to the agnostic mind.
All this, one may object, would go to show the defects of
Homer, Goethe and Shakespeare as philosophers, but does not
affect their poetry, by which they are first and last to be
judged. The contention, however, is that, in the higher
reaches, poetry becomes identical with philosophy, and the
deficiencies of the philosophical synthesis necessarily detract
from the completeness of the artistic harmony. This becomes
evident if we compare for a moment the symbolism of the
great poets. Symbolism, in fact, is the contrivance by which
the poet introduces reflection, while discarding the rigid tech-
nicalities of philosophical systems. Homer's symbolism is the
simplest. His reflection is restricted to moral musings on the
characters of men, and the result is embodied in epithets ex-
pressive of moral qualities: Agamemnon, of kingly presence;
Hector, the restless, the domineering; Penelope, the faithful;
Achilles, the impetuous, and so forth. Here the thought-ele-
ment is very meagre, while the picturesqueness is at its max-
11 The Religion of Shakespeare, London, 1899, p. 34.
762 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
imum. In Goethe, especially in the second part of Faust, the
symbolism is subtle, subjective, overladen with thought-con-
tent, but lacking in the picturesque quality. Shakespeare's
symbols are direct images. They are taken from the whole
range of human experience. But, they are restricted to expe-
rience. They are eminently empirical. They have no tran-
scendent thought-element in them; they sum up experience at
various times, in various places, and that is all. In Dante's
poem symbolism plays an essential part. There the symbol-
ical interpretation is the primary interpretation. And it is
a unique system of symbols. The symbols in it are real per-
sons and real objects. Virgil is human reason, Beatrice is
Divine Revelation, St. Lucy is enlightening grace; the panther,
the lion, and the she-wolf who bar the way, are Lust, Pride
and Envy. These are as definite, vivid and picturesque as the
Homeric epithets: they are infinitely more rich in thought-
content. They are as rich in content as Goethe's symbols and
incomparably more definite. Like Shakespeare's characters,
they are the results of experience and introspection, but in
Dante's hands they cease to be empirical. They are molded
into a world system in which the relations, for instance, be-
tween Reason, Revelation and Grace, or between Lust, Pride
and Envy, are worked out with the minutest philosophical
precision. These symbols are drawn from his own experience
and from the study of books. The whole world, past, present,
and to come, all nature, all history, all the speculations of the
theologians, all the reasonings of the philosophers, all the
dreams of the poets, the men whom he knew, the places which
he saw, the incidents of his own sad wanderings, his griefs, his
joys, his hopes, his fears, his hatreds all these furnish ma-
terial for his symbolism. But, the material was first ordered
and arranged into a definite, rational system. It was passed
through the transmuting fire of a great love. What results is
beautiful, therefore, it is poetry; it is true, therefore, it is
philosophy; it is good, therefore, it is moral. In this way,
Dante attained the effect which he himself intended, namely,
to compose a great poem to which symbolism offered the key;
the inspiration of the poem was to be Beatrice, and its pur-
pose to teach moral philosophy. "The subject of the poem,"
he says, 13 "is man in so far as by merit and demerit he is
l *Ep. Dedic. Kani Grandi de Scala, n. 8, Oxford edition, p. 416.
1921. J DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 763
liable to just reward and punishment." It would, therefore,
be unfair to Dante's memory to separate the philosophical
from the poetical or the poetical from the philosophical in his
work.
"All genius," says Coleridge, "is metaphysical," because
it brings us into contact with the ideal. The actual is the
realm of talent. Genius of whatever kind, scientific, literary,
artistic, philosophical, cannot rest in the actual, it seeks the
ideal actualized in what is incidental and accidental. Dis-
covery, in every line of human achievement, is the revelation
of the ideal in the actual world, where it is fragmentated, dis-
guised and degraded. It is the ideal that gives meaning and
significance to the actual. Science seeks to unveil the law
that lies beneath the everchanging events in the physical
world; history seeks to show forth the principles that underly
the passing show of human activity, human thought, and
human passion; the science of government endeavors to estab-
lish harmony in the conflict of human interest, human effort
and human aspiration. Poetry and philosophy have a higher
aim. They take all nature and all human experience for their
kingdom; they range over all knowledge and all human ac-
tivity in search of the Beautiful and the True. When they,
happily, agree, and each in its own way discovers God, then
the poet and the philosopher are blended in one; then God is
the Beauty, of which the world is a symbol, and the Truth, of
which the world is an expression, and, like Faith and Reason,
poetry and philosophy "make one music as before, but
vaster." Philosophy, in point of fact, "lisped in numbers."
All the earliest philosophers were poets, too. Plato had been
a poet in his youth, and he became a philosopher without
ceasing to be a poet. The prose of his Dialogues lacks only
technical conformity to the rules of versification to make it
numbered diction of the highest order. No wonder, then, that
Dante succeeded in combining so happily the poetic gift with
the philosophical. Look at that face of his in Giotto's im-
mortal fresco. There you see, as Carlisle says, "the softness,
the tenderness, the gentle affection, as of a child." You see in
it also the pride of genius, the stubbornness of invincible reso-
lution, and intelligent obstinacy, a masculine strength and
sternness. There is at once the gentleness of the Platonic
lover of spiritual beauty and the forcefulness of the Aristote-
764 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
lian scientific genius. As a Platonist, he felt, he suffered,
he expiated his own folly, and through grace attained salva-
tion. As an Aristotelian, he set out systematically, first to
conquer the technical difficulties of his art, then to acquire his
material by the study of science and theology, and, lastly, to
coordinate, systematize and dominate the whole field of
knowledge, like another Alexander, looking for more worlds
to conquer until his task was accomplished, and he had in
reality brought beneath the sceptre of his genius the whole
world of nature and of human nature. But, if he submitted
his own soul to the discipline of suffering, and subjected his
mind to the restraint of classic culture, if he attained through
infinite toil to a final domination of human experience for the
purpose of his poem, the inspiration that sustained him
through it all was his love for Beatrice and his resolve to
honor her as no woman had been honored before. Therefore,
while the body, so to speak, of his work was Aristotelian, the
soul of it was Platonic. He conformed to the fashion of the
troubadours, but rose immeasurably above them in serious-
ness of purpose. A troubadour, then, in externals, he was an
Aristotelian in intellect, and Platonist in heart and soul.
It remains to consider briefly another title by which Dante
can claim to be a philosopher. In common, current, phrase, a
philosopher is one who has mastered his own moods, who is
so securely intrenched in his own convictions that he is proof
against all the assaults of "outrageous fortune," one who has
learned to bear the untoward events of life with calmness,
imperturbability and even cheerful resignation. To meet mis-
fortune "philosophically" is to meet it with patience and
noble self-repression. To be a philosopher is, in homely
phrase, "to burn one's own smoke," and not blacken the land-
scape of one's own and other minds with the products of
those fires that "try men's souls." This is the Stoic notion of
philosophy, and the Stoic keyword is "self-mastery." Now,
Dante, both in theory and in practice, showed his apprecia-
tion of Stoicism. Among the most singular of all the verdicts
he pronounced on the heroes of antiquity is that which he
passed on Gato the Younger, the saint, so to speak, of Roman
Stoicism. Dante did not place him in the inferno of the sui-
cides, nor in the limbo where the other great pagan heroes are
gathered; he could not place him in the Church Suffering nor
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 765
in the Church Triumphant, because Cato had not seen the
light of Grace. Consequently, he assigned to him the task of
guarding the gates of Purgatory:
"I saw beside me an old man alone,
Worthy of so much reverence in his look,
That more owes not to father any son.
Reverent he made in me my knees and brow." 14
This post Cato is to hold until the day of Judgment, when, on
account of his natural virtues, he is to be admitted to the com-
pany of the Blessed. Another indication of Dante's Stoic in-
spiration is his frequent, and singularly beautiful, references
to light. Light was the Stoic symbol of truth and of God, and
readers of the Diuina Commedia know the use that Dante
makes both of the reality and of its symbolism in the gloom of
the Inferno, in the pale atmosphere of the mount of suffering,
and in the ascent to the dazzling effulgence which surrounds
the Godhead in Heaven. Without detracting from the sub-
limity and tenderness of Milton's address to Light, one may
echo Dinsmore's verdict that "no poet has been more keenly
sensitive to light" than Dante. 15 For Dante, then, as for the
Stoics, light is the emblem of truth and peace, and every man's
endeavor ought to be to let the blessed light illumine undis-
turbed his own soul. "Love," he says in the Convivio, "is
the informing principle of philosophy, and it manifests itself
in the exercise of wisdom, which brings with it marvelous de-
lights, namely, contentment under all circumstances and in-
difference to things that enthral other men." He was, then, a
theoretical Stoic, his Stoicism being, of course, tinged with
Christian moderation.
In practice, too, he was a Stoic. He sought to realize the
Stoic ideal in his own life. It is this ideal that reconciles the
apparently contradictory descriptions of him left us by Vil-
liani and Boccaccio. Villiani says: "Like other philosophers,
he was stern, nor did he readily converse with unlearned
men." This was the Stoic gravitas, the disdain for the vulgar
crowd. Boccaccio, on the contrary, tells us: "He was remark-
able for courtesy and good breeding. ... He bore all his ad-
"Purgatorio I., 31-51.
Aids to the Study of Dante, Boston, 1903, p. 341. See also Dean Church, Essay
on Dante, p. 387.
10 Convivio III., 13, Oxford edition, p. 290.
766 DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER [Sept.,
verse fortunes with true fortitude, nor did he ever yield to
impatience or bitterness, except in his political trials." This
was the Stoic self-mastery, a virtue which he acquired in the
school of suffering. At home, as well as in exile, he led a life
apart from the world in which he dwelt, and it was only by his
high resolve, by his love and faith that he was conducted
along hard, painful and solitary ways to "the lofty triumph of
the realm of truth." We may picture him as he appears in the
story of his visit to the monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo
in the Lunigiana. "He moved not, but stood silently contem-
plating the columns and arches of the cloister. And again
I asked him what he wished, and whom he sought. Then,
slowly turning his head and looking at the brethren and at me,
he answered, 'Peace.' " This peace he attained, Stoic-fashion,
by self-mastery. But, at the cost of a struggle. There were
discordant elements in his character. He was by nature
proud, bitter, almost acrid, in his hatreds, unconciliating, un-
forgiving. Listen to his expression of disdain for the cowardly
and indolent:
"Speak not of them, but look and pass them by." 17
From the traitor, Alberigo's, frozen lips in the depths of the
cold crystal of Cocytus, he hears unmoved this plaintive
prayer: "For pity, break the ice upon my face, that I may
weep a little while, before my fount of tears freeze up again."
Dante will not do the traitor even this facile favor, but an-
swers with terrible severity:
"To be rude to him were courtesy." 18
Now, look on another picture and see the fine sensibility of
the man. When, in Purgatorio XIII., he meets the host of the
Envious, who for punishment are blinded, he remarks:
"To me it seemed a want of courtesy
Unseen myself, in others' face to peer." 19
These and other opposing tendencies of his character were
finally harmonized by the help of Christian Stoicism. Once
he had reached self-mastery all the divergent passions of his
soul were reconciled in the one grand Stoic trait, Magna-
nimity :
"Inferno III., 51. "Inferno XXXIII., 150. "Purgatorio XIII., 73, 74.
1921.] DANTE AS A PHILOSOPHER 767
"Come after me and let the people talk;
Stand like a steadfast tower that never wags
Its summit for the blowing of the winds." 20
And again :
"To stand four cornered to the blows of fortune." 21
The soul, confident in its own courage and strength, con-
temptuous of everything mean and petty, despised the faint-
hearted and the cowardly. Of the spirits who, in the heavenly
war, took part neither with God nor with Satan, he says in
scathing phrase:
"These have, then, no hope of death." 22
This lofty, proud Stoic soul 'buttressed it is on conscience
and impregnable will" speaks to us through the solemn,
stern deathmask. There, too, as in Giotto's fresco, there are
not wanting traits of tenderness, refinement and a peculiar
feminine softness of outline; but over all is the Stoic trait,
Self-mastery. If the fresco in the Bargello is the portrait of
the youthful Platonic lover, the deathmask is the true image
of the mature Stoic philosopher.
Such, then, was Dante the philosopher. He has an ac-
knowledged right to stand, as Raphael represents him, among
the disputants in theology, a noble, austere figure, somehow
alone, in spite of the distinguished company, somehow apart
from them all his head neither encircled with the halo of
sainthood nor crowned with the tiara or the mitre of eccle-
siastical dignity, but enwreathed with a simple garland of
laurel a poet among theologians. He has an equal right to a
place in the companion picture, the school of philosophers.
There, indeed, he should be at home, with Plato, whose ideal-
ization of love he imitated, with Aristotle whom he honored as
"the master of those who know," with the Stoics whose severe
dignity and noble self-mastery he admired. There, in that
exalted company he might have occupied an honored place, a
poet among the philosophers.
*> Pnrgatorio V., 13-15. Paradiso XVII., 24. "Inferno III., 46.
DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES.
BY J. J. ROLBIECKI.
HE political doctrines of Dante are largely specu-
lative, hence independent of any particular po-
litical condition. Dante is more concerned about
what ought to be than about what is. Still his
politics cannot be entirely dissociated from the
political condition of Europe in his age. We observe that
during the lifetime of Dante the political power of both the
Papacy and the Empire were waning. The political unity of
the Middle Ages was breaking up into modern national states.
Italy, although early in forming its language, was tardy in
attaining its political unity. The Italy of Dante's time was
hopelessly partitioned into numerous petty states and princi-
palities practically independent of the Empire. These were
the scene of perpetual discord and internecine warfare.
Dante's own city of Florence was not an exception.
According to Dante, God is the universal Cause of all
things "Iddio e unwersalissima Cagione di tutte le cose." 1
The entire visible universe, hence also organized society, is
formed according to the plan in the mind of the First Cause.
The State is not absolute; it is bound by the laws of the Uni-
versal Cause. According to Dante, in order that there may be
a State, there must be a number of men or a multitude. They
must inhabit a definite territory which often is a natural
boundary, as a mountain range. These men must constitute
a unity, especially by having one supreme government, and
there must be a distinction between the rulers and the ruled,
or the governors and the governed. Dante is well aware of
the organic nature of the State. He holds that as nature pro-
duces the thumb, the hand, the arm and, finally, the whole
man for a definite function or end, so also God, through nature
which is His art, brings into being the individual, the family,
the village, the city, kingdom, and, finally, the entire human
race, all with a special end or purpose in view. 2
Dante himself does not enumerate the various character-
*Convivio III., 6. * De Monarchia I., 3.
1921.] DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES 769
istics of the State, but we cull them from his writings, and thus
show that his concept of the State is closely akin to that of
modern writers on the State, except that Dante was principally
concerned with an all-embracing Superstate, rather than with
particular or national states. Hence, in making a study of
the State, we are necessarily principally occupied with his
idea of a universal State.
Dante attributes the origin of the State to the will of God.
God created man and endowed him with the social nature
he possesses; hence, the State results from the nature of man
and ultimately from the will of God. Dante also bases the
necessity of the State on the nature of man. Man needs the
help of other men. Culture, civilization would be unknown
without the State. The necessity of the disciplinary power of
the State arises from the fact that man's nature is an impaired
nature, corrupted by original sin. De facto, man is so unruly
that he must often be forced to obey laws enacted for the
benefit of the entire community.
Dante holds that the prime end or aim of the State is
the temporal happiness of all its subjects. He says that man
was born to be happy, and that the State should endeavor to
make man happy during this life. The Church is supreme in
matters spiritual, the direction of man to his eternal destiny.
In order that men may be happy the State must maintain
peace, one of the most important requisites for happiness.
Moreover, the State should aim at the freedom of all its sub-
jects. The State should guarantee the liberty of men. An-
other aim of the State is to maintain justice. Dante asserts
that the world is best ordered when justice prevails therein. 3
As cupidity is the worst enemy of justice, the State must con-
trol the greed and covetousness of men which leads them to
violate justice. The State must protect the poor and the
feeble against the rapacity and avarice of the rich and
powerful.
Dante preferred monarchy, at least as the form of the
universal government. Most political writers of his time show
a marked preference for the monarchical form of government.
It was the prevailing form in Dante's age, and he had little
opportunity for studying any other forms except as exhibited
in Italy. And there, the vicissitudes of his native city of Flor-
8 Ibid. I., 11.
VOL. evil. 49
770 DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES [Sept.,
ence inspired him with little confidence in the democratic
form of government, and inclined him to desire a strong
monarchical form which would abolish party strife and main-
tain peace. Dante holds that the human race is in the best
condition of well-being when it is free, and that it is most free
when it is under the Monarch, that is the head of the world
monarchy or Superstate.
Dante divides all governments into two classes, politiae
rectse, which we may call good governments and politise
obliquae, or bad or perverse governments. Good govern-
ments are those that promote impartially the liberty, welfare
and happiness of all within the State. Governments are bad
when they deviate from this proper aim and purpose and
lend themselves to class or party or faction, and thus injure
the general welfare of the State. Dante maintains that any
government may deviate from right purpose, and that,
therefore, there should be a supergovernment, or a universal
monarchy, which would control, regulate and check all sub-
ordinate governments. The subjects of particular govern-
ments are very often unable to vindicate and uphold their
rights, and might be reduced to slavery were there no
superior power to curb bad governments and hold them in
check.
Dante does not propose to abolish the various forms of
government, whether they be democracies, aristocracies or
monarchies, provided they acknowledge the supremacy of the
world Monarch, the highest official of the Superstate. Dante
admits that even monarchies may degenerate into tyrannies.
There are many kings, he says, but few are good. 4 One may
state, concerning Dante's views on monarchy, that he up-
holds the principle of unity of government with one highest
official at its head, whatever form of government that may
be. He pushes the principle of unity of government to its
ultimate logical conclusion when he advocates one supreme
government for the whole world. Does Dante declare him-
self in favor of an hereditary monarchy? In answer to this
question it must be stated that, in Dante's time, the office of
the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was elective and not
hereditary. Dante seems quite indifferent whether the mon-
archs or rulers of various countries, be elective or hereditary,
4 Paradise XIII., 108.
1921.] DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES 111
provided their government is a good government, that is
functioning for the benefit of all the citizens of the State.
He teaches that all governors or rulers are the servants of
the people. The subjects of a government are not slaves,
they are not to be exploited. The ruler or chief executive
is an official whose bounden duty it is to provide for the
welfare of the governed. Hence, Dante calls the head of his
ideal Superstate, "the highest official." 5
No government is absolute, that is unlimited in its legis-
lative power. No government, not even the world Monarch,
can enact any laws contrary to the natural law, or that law
which flows from the very nature of man and of society.
Dante states that human law (ius humanum) is the founda-
tion of the Empire, and that, the imperial government dare
not violate. 6 Recognizing the differences between various
nations and peoples, he recognizes that they must be ruled
by different laws, hence there can be no fixed rules for the
organization of particular States.
Not only have officials of the State duties and obliga-
tions, but the citizens also have their obligations and respon-
sibilities. The criterion of a good subject is obedience to the
laws of the land. Dante says: "We have the law according
to which a citizen is said to be good or bad." 7 A citizen
should make sacrifices for the State and the defence of the
State is one of his grave obligations.
Dante teaches that the origin of sovereignty is God. God
is the fountainhead of all hieing, all good, all law, all power,
all authority and sovereignty. Both the supreme spiritual
authority of the Church and the supreme temporal authority
of the State are derived directly from God. However, the
Church derives its authority directly from God, by His own
words, by His personal revelation. The authority of the
Church does not result from the needs of human nature.
The State also derives its power directly from God, in the
sense that it does not receive its power through the Church
or some other institution, but its power and necessity flow
as the result of man's nature, and, therefore, it receives its
power from God, the Author of nature and the natural law.
Dante says that nature is the organ or the instrument of
God. 8 He maintains that what is received from nature,
*Convivio IV., 4. 9 De Monarchia III., 10.
T De Vulgari Eloquentia I., 16. 8 De Monarchia II., 2.
772 DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES [Sept.,
is received from God, but that the converse is not true. 9
Hence, although the temporal power is derived from nature,
it is derived from God, whereas, although, the spiritual power
is derived from God, it is not derived from nature. Dante
regards both the Church and the State as remedies against
the infirmity of original sin. 10 It is of importance to note that,
according to Dante, the sovereignty of the State springs from
nature and is based on human nature. Dante states explicitly
that the ancient Roman State was ordained by nature. 11
The Roman State, however, or Roman sovereignty, was
confirmed in especial manner by Divine Providence, as mani-
fested by miracles performed in its favor. Hence, Dante
asserts that the Roman Empire was divinely chosen. It is
significant that when Dante speaks of the Roman conquest
of the world he attributes it to the Roman people. This would
indicate that he held that the sovereignty of the Roman State
was the sovereignty of the Roman people, and that sovereignty
is primarily located in the people, although it is exercised by
the leaders of the people, that is, by their government. He
teaches that there should be one ruler of a community who
governs with the consent of the others. 12 To the objection
that Roman power was not obtained by universal consent, but
by force, Dante answers that the Roman Empire was extended
in accordance with the decrees of Divine Providence, which,
he says, is above all law, hence superior to the universal con-
sent of the governed. Therefore, in the case of the Romans,
universal consent was not necessary to make their authority
to govern legitimate, for their authority or government was,
so to speak, imposed by Divine Providence, otherwise, how-
ever, the universal consent of the governed would be neces-
sary to render the extension of Roman dominion legitimate.
Dante writes that the Church has no direct temporal
authority, for God did not grant the Church that authority,
neither did men by universal consent, since not only Asia and
Africa, but even most Europeans were opposed to the tem-
poral power of the Church. This also tends to show that
Dante holds that sovereignty is primarily located in the people
themselves who have the natural right to determine who shall
govern them, or exercise the sovereignty which remains in
their possession.
Ibid. III., 14. "Ibid. III., 4. "Ibid. II., 7. "Ibid. I., 5.
1921.] DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES 773
That Dante really taught that the sovereignty of the State
remains with the people, although they cede its exercise to a
governor or ruler, may be inferred from the following : "The
authority of a prince does not belong to him, he only has its
use, for no prince can confer authority on himself, he can
receive authority and relinquish it, but he cannot create an-
other prince, for the creation of princely authority does not
depend on the prince." 13 We believe the correct interpreta-
tion of this passage to be that only the ruler, or the governing
power of the State, has the right to exercise sovereignty. The
ruler does not give the governing power to himself, but re-
ceives it from the governed, i. e., the people, who cannot exer-
cise that power themselves, but must confer it on a governor
or ruler. The government can only use that power for the
benefit of all citizens, sovereignty remaining in the possession
of the people. Dante proves that the State is entirely inde-
pendent of the Church, and its head, the Pope, hence he shows
that sovereignty is manifested externally by its independence
of any external power.
Dante declares that the people are not bound to recog-
nize the illegal exercise of any sovereign power, and that they
are free from the yoke of usurpers. He even concedes to the
people the right to overthrow a government which they have
not acknowledged and to which they have not consented.
According to Dante, the sovereignty of the State is the
sovereignty of the ruler, combined with that of the people, or
the sovereignty of the government and of the governed. The
people primarily possess sovereignty, but cannot exercise it,
the ruler exercises it for the benefit of the citizens, but he does
not possess it, and he cannot divide, alienate or destroy it.
In discussing the relation between the Church and the
State, Dante was principally concerned with proving that the
secular power is not derived from God through the Church or
some minister or vicar of God. He holds that the secular
power is not dependent for its origin and being on the author-
ity of the Church. Dante takes up the various arguments ad-
vanced by mediaeval publicists in favor of the supremacy in
this field of the Church and replies to them.
After having stated that the temporal power is not de-
rived mediately through the Pope, Dante asserts that, in a
"Ibid, m., 7.
774 DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES [Sept.,
certain sense, the Emperor is subject to the Pope, since tem-
poral happiness is in a way subordinated to eternal happiness :
"Let Caesar, therefore, revere Peter, in the same manner as a
first-born son should revere his father; so that enlightened by
paternal grace, he may more effectively irradiate the world
over which he has been placed by Him alone, Who is ruler
of all things spiritual and temporal." 14 Dante insists on the
independence of both Church and State, but he expects them
mutually to support and assist each other.
In his attempt to establish the political superstructure of
his world monarchy on a firm basis, Dante gives it an his-
torical setting. He endeavors to show that the Holy Roman
Empire of his day is the logical and historical sequence of
the ancient Roman Empire. Such an assumption is, of course,
unwarranted. Dante does not prove any such continuity, he
simply assumes it.
The most important feature of Dante's political theory is
his idea of a universal empire. In the first book of his De
Monarchia, Dante sets out to prove that the universal empire
is necessary for the peace and welfare of mankind. "Tem-
poral monarchy, then, or, as it is called, the Empire, is the
government of one prince above all men in time, or in those
things and over those things which are measured by time." 15
Dante means that there should be one supreme government
over all men, no matter of what religion or nationality they
may be, and that this supergovernment should continue as
long as the world endures. Its authority is limited to tem-
poral affairs; it is not concerned with the eternal destiny of
man. The common temporal aim of man is human happiness.
Dante argues, therefore, that when many are tending toward
the same end, there should be one ruling or governing power
directing the many towards that end. Lack of unity produces
discord and rivalry effective obstacles to its attainment. As
the whole human race has a common earthly end or destiny,
it should also have a common earthly government.
Dante writes 16 that wherever there is a controversy, there
must be a judge to decide the controversy. He says a contro-
versy may arise between any two independent princes and,
since neither is subject to the other, it is necessary to have
recourse to a third whose jurisdiction extends over the two
IWtf.m.lG. I., 10.
1921.] DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES 775
litigants. If this third be the universal Monarch, then we
have precisely the official whose necessity we seek to estab-
lish. But if not, then the third party will again have an equal
or some one entirely independent of his jurisdiction with
whom he might dispute. Hence, a third party would be
needed again, but if this third party should have an equal, it
would be necessary to have recourse to one possessing still
greater jurisdiction, and the process would be carried on in-
definitely. This is manifestly impossible. Consequently, there
must be one supreme judge whose decision would terminate
all controversies, either directly or indirectly, and this will be
the Monarch or Emperor. Therefore, a universal empire is
necessary for the welfare of the world.
The condition of mankind is best, Dante states, when men
are most free. But only under the rule of the universal Mon-
arch is the human race most free, for only when there is a
supreme Monarch, can bad governments be corrected and
regulated, and the liberties of men safeguarded.
Furthermore, Dante holds that to be best which most
faithfully reflects unity. 17 The welfare of mankind depends
on the unity of the wills of all individual men. But there
can be no unity of wills unless there be one will, which is
the master and regulator of all other wills. However, this
cannot be unless there be a prince whose will regulates and
unifies the wills of mankind. Therefore, it is best for human-
ity to submit to the government of the universal Monarch.
The common political organization of mankind into one whole
is the most perfect organization of the human race. The
unity of the entire race in one universal empire, Dante regards
as the highest form of political perfection which mankind may
attain.
Having considered some of Dante's arguments in favor of
a Superstate or universal monarchy, let us see now, and to
what extent other States are to be subordinated to this colossal
political structure. We read the following words of Dante
regarding the relation of particular States to the Superstate:
"But it must be carefully observed that when we say that
mankind may be ruled by one supreme prince, we do not
mean that the most trifling judgments for each particular
town are to proceed immediately from him. For municipal
"Ibid. I., 15.
776 DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES [Sept.,
laws sometimes fail, and need guidance, as the Philosopher
shows in his fifth book to Nicomachus. 18 Nations, kingdoms
and States shall enjoy the right to frame special laws for
their own special and peculiar needs. Only in those things
that are common to all men, should men be ruled by one
monarch. The individual princes must receive this rule of
life or law from him." 19 This passage is invaluable in ex-
plaining the relation of subordinate States to the Superstate
or universal empire. Dante shows that the relation of the
subordinate States to the universal empire is analogous to the
relation of the tribes of Israel to the chief authority, Moses.
It must be noted, however, that this is but an analogy
and cannot be stretched too far. Dante by no means wishes
to do away with the differences that exist between various
peoples and nationalities. Yet all these peoples have a human
nature in common, hence have a common natural law, and
what is immediately derived from it, the human law (ius
humanum) which, Dante says, is the foundation of the em-
pire. They have, above all, the same end or purpose : happi-
ness on this earth, and, therefore, need a common supreme
direction or guidance. It should be remembered that the
principal object of Dante's Superstate, or its raison d'etre, is
the defence of the freedom of all the peoples in the world and
the maintenance of peace among them.
The various languages, laws, customs and even govern-
ments of the various peoples may remain. The emperor is
not to be directly concerned with these, provided they do
not encroach on the freedom of men, and in no way endanger
or disturb the peace of the world. The particular govern-
ments are to guide their subjects to happiness and welfare
according to their different customs and laws. The super-
government is to guide the entire human race according to
those laws which all men have in common in spite of their
differences, and thus maintain universal peace which is the
prime requisite for the temporal welfare and happiness of all
mankind.
It seems that Dante's idea of the relation of particular
States to the universal monarchy is that the various peoples,
living in various climes and having diverse languages, can be
organized into their particular States with their local forms
M Aristotle's Ethics V., 10. De Monarchia I., 14.
1921.] DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES 111
of government, and at the same time enter into the political
structure of the Superstate, without being reduced to mere
provinces. These particular States, according to Dante's
theory, would be true States possessing all the attributes of
sovereignty except that of complete independence of any ex-
ternal power. Thus the Superstate would be composed of
States having a limited sovereignty, and the inhabitants of
the world would be citizens of the universal empire and at
the same time citizens of their own national States. The
status of such a citizen would, in a certain measure, be anal-
ogous to that of a citizen of our United States, who at the same
time is a citizen of his own particular State, for instance,
New York or California. Dante himself says that he is a
citizen of the world, yet he maintains that he is a citizen of
his beloved Florence and Tuscany. Dante argues in favor of
a Superstate, but he does not intend to abolish national States,
provided their governments rightly govern their subjects and
acknowledge their subordination for the common interests
and welfare of all mankind, to the Superstate or universal
empire. Dante insists on unity, but he will not have dead
uniformity.
One might urge that Dante's thought was that there really
should be only one State, and not many subordinate States,
forming a Superstate, since he says, on Aristotle's authority,
that a multitude of princedoms is an evil, hence there should
be but one Prince. 20 In answer to this, it can be stated that
it is evident from numerous passages found in his works that
Dante does not at all intend to abolish the various States, but
for the sake of unity he insists on their subordination to
the universal State. It is not a multitude of princedoms or
States ( pluralitas principatuum) , but a multitude of heads
(pluralitas capitum), which to Dante is the source of innumer-
able evils for mankind. Hence, Dante bewails this deplorable
condition, saying : "O mankind ! how many storms, what great
losses, and how many shipwrecks must distress thee, so long
as thou, like a beast of many heads, strivest after diverse
ends!" 21
With this we conclude our brief survey of Dante's polit-
ical theories. Dante considered mankind as one, with a com-
mon earthly aim or destiny, and requiring one supreme
20 Ibid. L, 10. *Ibid. I., 16.
778 DANTE'S POLITICAL THEORIES [Sept.,
political government which would direct it in those things
which it has in common towards its common end. It is im-
portant to note that Dante is an advocate of the sovereignty
of the people, and that he regards emperors, kings, rulers or
governors as officials, servants and representatives of the peo-
ple. Dante longed for peace, he ardently desired it, he wished
that mankind might be spared the horrors and misfortunes
of war, and, therefore, he pleads in favor of a supreme govern-
ment which could prevent war and assure to all mankind the
blessings of a permanent peace. He cries out: "Oh, my un-
happy, unhappy country! how my heart is wrung with pity
for thee whenever I read, whenever I write, anything which
may have reference to civil government." 22 No doubt,
today he would pity the world oppressed by the dire conse-
quences of the Great War. He was truly a citizen of the world
for he says : "Nos autem cm mundus est patria, velut piscibus
aequor." 23 The world was his fatherland, hence, he was deeply
interested in the welfare of all men whom he regarded as his
brothers. Dante's idea of a universal empire is one of the
most sublime conceptions of the human mind, and he must
be regarded as one of the master minds of humanity. He has
been looked upon as a dreamer, and yet today, more than ever
in the history of the world, is the necessity for some inter-
national cooperation, for some world league or union or asso-
ciation growing more and more apparent. Truly, the political
organization of mankind will never be complete without
something similar to Dante's ideal of a universal empire.
Men of all races and all tongues, and all nationalities must
recognize that Dante Alighieri was the friend and well-wisher
of all mankind. His name will endure in the literature of
the world as the greatest and noblest Cantore della pace e
della fratellanza universale.
22 Convivio IV., 27. * De Vulgari Eloquentia I., 6.
DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN.
BY HUMPHREY MOYNIHAN, D.D.
ILGRIMS to Rome pause before a fresco in the
Vatican which in splendor of design and perfec-
tion of execution marks, they are told, an epoch
in the development of the human mind. It is
Raphael's crowning work, commonly called "The
Disputa," but more correctly entitled "Theology." It repre-
sents Heaven and Earth united by the bond of the Sacrament
of the Eucharist. Above, massed about the Blessed Trinity in
exquisite array, are the denizens of the Court of Heaven
angels and cherubim in their hosts, patriarchs and prophets,
saints, martyrs, and apostles. Below, in two great groups
around an altar on which stands a monstrance, are the master
builders of the Church. Among the Fathers of early days, St.
Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome are con-
spicuous; while among the Scholastics of later times, Peter the
Lombard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns
Scotus are easily discerned. In the midst of popes and bishops
and doctors stands a man who wears neither halo nor tiara,
neither mitre nor scholar's gown, a man whose face was "the
mournfulest ever painted from reality." There is no mistak-
ing that countenance of austere grandeur, with the laurel-
wreathed brows it is Dante Alighieri. Many deem it strange
that in a picture which is a summary of fifteen centuries of
faith the greatest of painters should have placed a poet in the
midst of the glorious company of theologians; but they think
it strange only because they forget that theology is the very
warp and woof of the poem "to which heaven and earth set
their hand." It is to be deplored that among the countless
commentators on Dante's works so few emphasize the fact
that theology is the groundwork of the Divina Commedia, the
real secret of its abiding power and grandeur, its true claim
to the name it bears.
During the first centuries of its history the Church was
fighting on the defensive. In its long conflict with pagan, Jew,
and heretic it was expounding the faith, gradually defining its
780 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
doctrines more accurately, but making little or no attempt at
formulating a complete and closely-knit system of theology.
This task was reserved for days when Teuton and Norse,
Saxon and Frank had been baptized, when the rise of univer-
sities had attracted the finest intellects of Europe to a few
centres of thought, and when the coming of the "new knowl-
edge," the philosophy of Aristotle, had rendered imperative
the harmonizing of reason and revelation.
In Dante's boyhood Albertus Magnus was spending the
closing years of his long life at Cologne, teaching and writing
to the last, "reconstructing Aristotle for the use of the Latins."
St. Bonaventure, too, was still bringing all problems of psy-
chology and metaphysics into relation with God. In Dante's
prime, Roger Bacon was stormily lecturing at Oxford, insist-
ing that philosophy must not dominate theology, while Duns
Scotus was busily criticizing many of the cherished views of
Thomas Aquinas, denouncing, in particular, the union of
metaphysics and the sacred science. Notable also among
Dante's contemporaries were William of Ockham, bent on
widening the cleft between philosophy and theology, and Ray-
mond Lully, holding against Duns Scotus and Ockham that all
truths of religion, even mysteries, are demonstrable by reason.
It was the golden age of religious thought :
For in those dark and iron days of old
Arose amid the pigmies of their age
Minds of a massive and gigantic mould,
Whom we must measure as the Cretan Sage
Measured the pyramids of ages past,
By the far-reaching shadows that they cast.
Towering aloft among all the friar doctors of his day, Thomas
Aquinas ruled the Schools, a man who, in the words of Leo
XIII., "dwelt in the house of wisdom as prince in his king-
dom." His greatest work, the Summa Theologica, the Sum of
Theology, presents compactly and completely the teachings of
the one visible organization divinely commissioned to guard
the spiritual interests of mankind. It sets forth the most mar-
velous conception of God and the universe to be found in the
whole range of Christian thought, fusing the highest specula-
tive thought of the time with its prof oundest spiritual convic-
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 781
tions, proclaiming that religion is reasonable and reason
divine.
Dante, theologian among poets, and poet among theo-
logians, arose to transmute into immortal verse the great chap-
ters of the theology of the Church, and to bring within the
reach of the common people everywhere the sublime specula-
tions of all the great minds that had been pondering on Chris-
tianity before his day.
"Since the chief aim of theology," writes St. Thomas, "is to
give the knowledge of God not only as He is in Himself, but
also as He is the Beginning of all things and the End of all,
especially of rational creatures, we shall treat, first, of God;
secondly, of rational creatures in their advance towards God;
thirdly, of Christ, Who, as Man, is the way by which we tend
to God." Such is the simple, spacious plan of the work
destined to influence the world of religious thought more pro-
foundly than any other treatise in the vast range of the
Church's literature. The entire teaching of Christianity is
there, with a clearness of conception, and a precision of ex-
pression that continue to win the admiration of all who, age
after age, ponder the ultimate realities of which the human
mind never grows weary of thinking God and nature and
man.
Distinctive of Catholic theology, the sworn foe of Pan-
theism, is the doctrine of Creation. "The Lord hath made
heaven and earth." "For Thou didst create all things and
because of Thy will they are and were created." The Bible
is, perhaps, the only book that affirms that God through His
word and almighty will called the universe out of nothingness
into existence. Dante, in his own majestic way, touches this
truth, without which religion could not be:
The glory bright of Him Who moveth all
Doth penetrate the universe and shine
In one part more while less doth elsewhere fall. 1
The student of the Summa Theologica will recognize in the
opening words of the Paradiso the familiar thought of Aqui-
nas: "Deus est primus motor omnium qu.se. naturaliter moven-
tur." The poet takes the dry dictum of the theologian, and
suffuses it with living beauty Shelley offers this first stanza
1 Paradiso I., 1-3.
782 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
of the Paradiso as a test of appreciation of great poetry. Not
less distinctive of Christianity is the doctrine that God is love,
and that love was the motive power that called all things into
being. For this profound truth Dante finds fitting poetic
expression :
"God's goodness, which no kind of envy knows,
Glowing within itself and sparkling forth
Its everlasting beauties doth disclose." 2
Into new loves eternal Love unfolds this, in a word, is
Creation.
Of the order pervading the universe, the source of its
unity and beauty, St. Thomas writes: "To take away order
from created beings is to take away what is best in them; the
individual things are good in themselves, yet all of them to-
gether are best because of the order of the universe, for the
whole is always better than the parts and is, indeed, the end to
which they tend." As we read Dante discoursing on the order
of the world, we seem to be listening to St. Thomas lecturing
on the twofold order of created things, one regulating their
relation to one another, the other, their relation to their Divine
Source :
"A law of order reigns
Throughout Creation, and this law it is
Which like to God the universe maintains.
Herein do creatures see displayed
The trace of the eternal might; and this
The end for which such ordinance was made.
All natures to this heavenly law incline,
Approaching each, according to its kind,
Some more, some less, unto their source divine." 3
As the opening Canto of the Paradiso borrowed its splen-
dor from St. Thomas' exposition of the basic truth of religion,
so does a later Canto (VII.) serve as a noble commentary on
the central doctrine of Christianity, the Incarnation and
Atonement. It deals with questions that commonly engaged
the finest minds of the Schools in those times. Why were the
Incarnation and the Passion the method chosen by God for
Paradiso VII., 64-66. 'Paradise I., 103-111.
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 783
redemption? Could not God have pardoned mankind with-
out them? Was it necessary that Christ should suffer for the
redemption of the human race? Was any other mode of re-
demption possible? Was any other mode more fitting? St.
Thomas presents the problem as follows : "By no necessity was
Christ forced to suffer, either on the part of God, Who decreed
that He should suffer, or of Christ Who voluntarily endured
His Passion. His Omnipotence might have effected it in other
ways. No satisfaction could be made by man for the sin by
which the human race was corrupted. That sin, having been
committed against God, had a certain infinite character, be-
cause of the infinity of the Divine Majesty; for the gravity of
the offence is measured by the rank of the person outraged.
Hence, suitable satisfaction for the first sin of man required
that the act of the person rendering it should be of infinite
value. It remains that God should redeem man by mercy, or
justice, or both. The redemption of man by the Incarnation
was, at once, the supreme work of Divine Justice and of Divine
Mercy." Dante takes the thought of the Summa Theologica
and versifies it, adhering to the text of St. Thomas so closely
that Poletto and other commentators point to the passage as
an example of the exactness with which the poet reproduces
the argument of the theologian:
"Fix now thine eyes the deep abyss within
Of the eternal counsels, with thy might,
Bent the full meaning of my words to win.
Man, in his limitations, ne'er aright
Could satisfy, since ne'er could he descend,
Obeying now, depths answering to the height,
Which he thought, disobeying, to ascend;
And this the reason is why man could ne'er,
Left to himself, make due and full amend.
So was it meet that God the task should bear,
And in His own ways man's whole life renew;
I say, or in the one, or in the pair.
But forasmuch as favor doth accrue
To work from worker, as it doth disclose
Of that heart whence it springs the goodness true,
Goodness Divine, whose seal the whole world shows,
To work Its will, by all and every way,
To raise you up again to true life, chose:
Nor 'twixt the last night and the primal day
784 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
Was ever process so sublime and high
Wrought or by this or that, or shall for aye;
For God was far more bounteous in supply,
Giving Himself that man himself might raise,
Than if He of Himself had put sin by.
And scant and poor had proved all other ways
For claims of justice, but that God's own Son,
Become incarnate, should Himself abase."*
A pithy Italian proverb, "traddutore, traditore," intimates that
translation is always treason. So, assuredly, is it in the case
of the language which Dante molded as he wrote, and it is
only when we read his own words, those first beautiful ac-
cents of modern speech in which he expounded the Church's
thought, that we fully realize how just is the saying of Pro-
fessor Hceffding: "It may be that poetry gives more perfect
expression to the highest reality than any scientific concept
can ever do."
Again, it is the common heritage of the reverent thought
of all ages that God is the Goal to which human aspirations
tend, and in which human desires find rest. All things return
whence they come "All the water of the Earth is the water
of the sea" and so to God man returns, drawn back by his
love of truth and the yearning of his whole being for happi-
ness. "Nothing," says St. Thomas, "can set the will of man to
rest but universal good, which is not found in anything created,
but in God alone. Hence, God alone can satisfy the heart of
man." This truth is set forth by Dante in almost the words
of his Master: "The loftiest desire of each thing, and the
earliest implanted by nature, is the desire of returning to its
first cause. And since God is the first cause of our souls, and
has created them like unto Himself (as it is written 'Let us
make man in our own image and likeness'), the soul desires
most of all to return to Him. And just as a pilgrim who
travels by a road on which he never went before, thinks that
every house which he sees from afar is an inn, and, on finding
that it is not, fixes his trust on some other, and so from house
to house until he comes to the inn; so our soul, as soon as ever
she enters on this new and hitherto untrodden path of life,
bends her gaze on the highest good as the goal, and, therefore,
believes that everything she sees which appears to contain
'Paradiso VII., 94-120.
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 785
some good in itself is that highest good." The vision of God,
the Highest Good, comes as the crowning of the great pilgrim-
age. In a canto which that veteran Dantist, Dr. Moore of
Oxford, pronounced one of the most astonishing achievements
of poetic genius and religious fervor to be found in all liter-
ature, Dante describes how, in a moment of ecstatic intuition,
he caught, as in a lightning flash, a glimpse of the Blessed
Vision in which all things are, at last, understood, and in
which alone the happiness of man is perfectly realized:
"In its abysmal depths mine eye did learn,
Bound in one volume with the Love divine,
The law on which the universe doth turn:
Substance and accident and modes combine,
All blent together in such order due,
That what I tell as simple light doth shine.
Before that light one grows to such content
That to turn back from it to aught beside
The soul can never possibly consent." 5
And it is not alone the broad, basic themes of his religion
that quicken Dante's genius. All the chief doctrines of the
Church are in his writings, now crisply limned in a few vivid
words, now amplified and elaborated in a poetic dissertation
of theological scholarship. "It is, perhaps, a bold assertion,"
writes Dean Milman, "but what is there on those transcendent
subjects in the vast theology of Aquinas of which the essence
is not in the Paradiso of Dante?" The fate of those who never
knew Christ, the power of miracles to prove, the obscure de-
crees of Predestination, the laws of vows and dispensations,
the hierarchies of the ministering spirits of God, are all there,
and many more, all in the vesture of beauty with which Dante
decked everything to which he put his hand. The exposition
of faith, hope, and charity, which* as a prelude to the Beatific
Vision, was elicited by SS. Peter, James, and John, consti-
tutes a typical theological treatise, reminiscent of the stern
ordeal for the Doctor's degree in Paris, or Oxford, or Bologna.
The doctrine of a Middle State, so specifically Catholic, runs
through every stanza of the Purgatorio, a doctrine with which
are bound up the efficiency of good works, prayers for the
dead, Indulgences, and the Communion of Saints.
'Paradiso XXXIII., 85-90, 100-102.
VOL. cxin. 50
786 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
Sometimes a truth is presented in a most engaging manner
pictorially. The Angel who guards the gate to Purgatory is
seated on the threshold to which three steps lead up. Of
these the first is of white marble, so polished and smooth that
in it a man beholds himself as he is. The second is darker
than purple black, rugged and calcined, rent in all its length
and breadth. The third is of porphyry, flaming as blood that
spurts from a vein. The symbolism is not far to seek. The
first step to penance is candid confession, mirroring the soul
as it is; the second is contrition, breaking the hard heart; the
third is love all aflame, finding expression in satisfaction.
Gateway and steps are a figure of the Sacrament of Penance.
Then prostrate at the holy feet I lay:
Mercy I begged, and opening of the gate,
And thrice I smote my breast in contrite way.
Ashes or earth dug out, left dry and bare,
Would of one color with his garments be,
And from beneath them he two keys did bear.
Of silver one, of gold the other key;
First he the white, and then the yellow plied
Upon the door, and thus he gladdened me. 6
The key of gold is the key of authority, denoting the power of
absolution; the key of silver is the key of science, denoting
the knowledge which discerns the true penitent. Could there
be a more exquisite picturing of the priest as he exercises his
forgiving power in the Tribunal of Mercy that Christ estab-
lished in a sinful world?
The place accorded to the Blessed Virgin in the Divina
Commedia reveals the twofold strain of theology and mysti-
cism running through Dante's life and works. Of his own
devotion to the Mother of the Lord, the poet does not leave
us in doubt. Her name is often on his lips :
The name of that fair Flower
Whose bounteous grace at morn and eve I ask. 7
As the pilgrims to Eternity toil up the weary mountain, rid-
ding themselves of the scars of sin, 8 they are confronted on
'Pnroatorio IX., 109-111, 115-120. T Paradl so XXIII., 88, 89. Purgatorio XL, 30.
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 787
every terrace with examples of the good they rejected and also
of the evil they embraced. It is the Blessed Virgin whose
virtues are first proposed for their contemplation on the suc-
cessive cornices; from her life each pattern instance of holi-
ness is drawn. The devotion of long generations of Catholic
piety is gathered up in the names by which she is hailed:
"Queen of Glory," "living fountain head of hope," "rose in
which the Word Divine became incarnate," "Spouse of the
Holy Spirit," "lovely garden that 'neath the rays of Christ
blooms fair to see." She it was who "turned the Key that
high love open laid;" hers "the face that most resembles
Christ's." Those who seek refuge under the mantle of her
protection never appeal in vain for help. Wonderful is that
scene in the Starry Heaven, where Gabriel sings in honor of
the Virgin Mother:
What melody soe'er doth sweetest sound
On earth, and draws the soul in rapt desire,
Would be like broken clouds that thunder 'round,
Compared with that sweet music from the lyre
That o'er that sapphire bright was then entwined,
Which doth the heaven most lustrous ensapphire. 9
And all of Christ's triumphant hosts "sang Regina Cceli with
a tone so sweet, its joy fades not from memory." 10 Still more
wonderful is that lyric prayer of the closing canto, almost
worthy to take its place by the side of Regina Cceli, and, like
it, to be incorporated into the liturgy of the Church. 11 As we
come upon such passages, the outpouring of Dante's devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, we recall Cardinal Manning's words:
"The poem united the book of Dogma and the book of Devo-
tion, and is, itself, both Dogma and Devotion clothed in con-
ceptions of intensity and beauty which have never been sur-
passed."
To those who do not bring to the study of the Divina Corn-
media the Catholic mind and heart, many passages are what
they were to Carlyle inarticulate music. Those alone whose
minds are steeped in Catholic theology attain the full mean-
ing of the poem and savor all its sweetness and power. Dr.
Wicksteed, in an illuminating passage, makes this clear:
"When used in the true spirit the works of Aquinas often
Paradiso XXIII., 97-102. Paradise XXIII., 128, 129.
XXXIII., 1, 2, 16-21.
788 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
thrust unsuspected light even on minute details in the Comedy,
and indefinitely enrich and deepen the color of passages
already full of meaning and beauty, supplying us with the
presuppositions necessary to a full comprehension of passing
hints, or endowing us with the sense by which we feel the
natural requirements of some given situation." Dante is a
poet for all the world : he is preeminently the poet of priests.
It seems ludicrous, then, that Dante, of all men, should be
accused of heresy. Such, however, is the case, and various
facts seemed to lend color to the charge. Did not Dante place
among the Elect in heaven, Joachim, the famous Calabrian
Abbot, one of whose doctrines fell under the ban of the
Lateran Council? Did he not confer similar honors on Siger
of Brabant, who drew the fire of St. Thomas, and whose book,
Impossibilia, reeked with heresy? Did not a Legate of Pope
John XXII., cause his treatise, On Monarchy, to be publicly
burned? Was not Dante persistently claimed by Protestants
as a "reformer before the Reformation?" Ugo Foscelo tried
to establish that Dante was not only a prophet of the Refor-
mation, but even deemed himself sent by heaven to inaugurate
the movement; and Gabriel Rossetti strove to read into Dante's
works a secret conspiracy against the Church. Most daring
of all, Ernest Aroux labored to prove that Dante was a heretic,
a Socialist in disguise, an infidel, a pantheist. These state-
ments were taken quite seriously in days gone by, and called
forth indignant repudiations from many quarters. Even
Cardinal Bellarmine thought it necessary to come to the de-
fence of Dante's orthodoxy; and the illustrious historian,
Cesare Cantu, dignified Aroux' attack by an open letter of
rebuttal. The charge of heresy is now no longer mentioned, or
mentioned only to illustrate the vagaries of bigotry, or simply
to accentuate Dante's intense loyalty to his faith. It will be
noted that it was his attitude towards the Church and the
Pope that was called in question, and yet, his allegiance to
both is again and again proclaimed beyond possibility of cayij.
The Church is "the Spouse and Secretary of Christ," "the
Bride of Him Who with loud cries espoused her with His
blessed blood," "the infallible mistress who can speak no lie,
and in whose footsteps we must walk." His veneration for the
Roman Pontiffs is equally outspoken. The Pope is "the vicar
of Christ," "Bishop of the Church Universal," "gatekeeper of
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 789
the heavens," "prefect of the Court of God," "guide to Eternal
Life." The Pope is the "Shepherd of the Church," the guide
of souls:
"Ye have the Scriptures Old and New in mind,
The Pastor of the Church to be your guide;
Enough for your salvation there you'll find.
If evil lust aught else to you hath cried
Be ye as men, and not like silly beasts,
Lest e'en the Jews among you you deride." 12
As we think of the blazing tombs to which Dante consigned
heretics and of his passionate denunciation of those "who
speak against our faith," we have one more illustration of the
incurable blindness that bigotry brings upon its victims.
What then is to be said of the scanty regard which Dante
meted out to some of the Popes? The recent Encyclical of the
Holy Father on Dante's Sixth Centenary takes cognizance of
this charge: "He attacked the Sovereign Pontiffs of his time
bitterly and contumeliously." The Encyclical also furnishes
the reply. The Popes assailed by Dante were Popes whom he
regarded as his political enemies, belonging to the party whom
he held responsible for his perpetual exile from his beloved
Florence. Against no one does he inveigh with so much
acridity as against Boniface VIII., whom he hated with pecu-
liar virulence. And yet, when the minions of Sciarra Colonna
broke into the Pope's palace at Anagni, and heaped indignities
on the aged Pontiff, it was Dante who likened the venerable
victim of the outrage to Christ in His Passion, and invoked the
vengeance of Heaven on the sacrilege:
"I in Alagna see the fleur-de-lys,
Christ, in His Vicar, captive to the foe.
Him once again as mocked and scorned I see,
I see once more the vinegar and gall,
And slain between new robbers hangeth he."
"When, O my Lord, shall I be satisfied,
With looking on the secret vengeance stored,
Which Thou, Thy wrath assuaging, still dost hide?" 13
The deep dislike which Dante had for Boniface did not pre-
"Paradtso V., 76-81. Purgatorio XX., 86-90, 94-96.
790 DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN [Sept.,
vent him from beholding in him the Vicar of Christ, and from
crying out with all the energy of his soul against the desecra-
tion done to his person.
As to the rest, it must be borne in mind that the thirteenth
century, with all its glories, was not without its abuses-
abuses which men of discerning spirit will ascribe to the man-
ners of the times rather than to the Church. It was inevitable
that Dante, with his burning sense of righteousness, flaying
friend and foe alike with unsparing hand, should be some-
times hurried by his vehemence beyond the bounds of just
reprehension.
Six hundred years have lapsed since Dante lay down in
the mantle and cowl of a Franciscan Tertiary to die. Far dif-
ferent is the world that reads his poem today from that in
which he wrote and wandered. Columbus, Copernicus, New-
ton have changed the very conception of the universe that
formed the framework of the Divine Commedia; and Des-
cartes, Locke and Kant have wrought changes still more mo-
mentous in men's modes of thinking. The Renaissance and
the Reformation, alien to the thought and spirit of the Floren-
tine, the shallow philosophy of the eighteenth century, the
shallow science of the nineteenth many forces have been at
work disrupting the unity of Europe as Dante knew it. This
is Europe's greatest calamity. Were the poet to come back to
earth, he would find the peoples following shifting banners,
like the multitudes borne hither and thither on the blasts of
his Inferno. The world is torn by conflicting systems of
thought: Materialism, Pantheism, Agnosticism, Idealism,
Skepticism, jostle one another on the field of speculation,
agreeing in naught save in the rejection of the Supernatural.
Naturalism saturates and contaminates the air we breathe,
and in that atmosphere religion and all the lovely things of
life that draw their vital nourishment from religion languish
and decay.
And yet never was Dante's supremacy in literature so
solidly assured; never was his influence so deeply and widely
felt in the world at large. The voice of Dante was the voice
of the Middle Ages, and yet it is heard to the uttermost bounds
of the earth. His poem was the synthesis of the Middle Ages,
and yet it stands matchless and unapproachable in literature.
How is this apparent anomaly to be explained?
1921.] DANTE THE THEOLOGIAN 791
The supreme need of the world today, and in all days-
today, perhaps, more than ever before is faith in the Super-
natural. This, and this alone, can save humanity from itself.
A world of failing faith turns all the massive achievements of
the mind of man to the work of destroying civilization itself.
For that faith the world is yearning with a longing of which,
it may be, it is only dimly conscious. It is because Dante, six
centuries ago, took that faith, and set it to the music of his
lyre, and sent its sweet strains breathing through the world,
that he is hailed, by the greatest of his craft in our times,
King that hast reigned six hundred years and grown
In power and ever growest.
Religion, the perennial need of the human spirit through
the changes and chances of time, was the inspiration of
Dante's hundred cantos. There is no enduring literature that
does not in some form or other embody religion, and the
Divina Commedia, with its pilgrimage of a human soul from
the wood so wild and rude and stern to the Love that moves
the sun and every star, is the loveliest and loftiest literary
expression of it molded by the lips of man. Much else, indeed,
there is in the Divina Commedia beauty of language, "now
singing as the stormy sea, now soft as the evening breeze," the
power to make one word do duty for a hundred, imagery un-
surpassed for its pictorial power, intensity of feeling, infinite
pathos, the enigma of a haunting personality, the onward
steady march of righteousness to its inevitable triumph; but,
overshadowing all these is the glory shed upon the poem by
the faith in the Supernatural with which it is aglow. Beatrice,
who guided Dante through the unseen realms, was the symbol
of Theology. It is Theology that makes the Divina Commedia
the truly great poem, "a fountain forever overflowing with the
waters of wisdom and delight."
DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS.
BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
HEN Dante died, he was buried in the Lady
Chapel of the Franciscan Church in Ravenna.
It was meet that after death his body should
remain in the care of the city which had solaced
with reverent devotion the last bitter years of his
exile; and fitting, too, that he should be buried amongst the
brethren of the Saint whose ideals so largely entered into the
poet's own vision of a new earth reconstructed in the spirit
of Christ.
The fact that Dante was buried in the Franciscan Church
is no proof that he was in any way affiliated to the Franciscan
Order, for by the beginning of the fourteenth century it had
become the fashion for people of note to seek burial in the
churches of the Friars. But a persistent tradition, which
cannot lightly be put aside, asserts a close relationship be-
tween the poet and the Franciscans. In its earliest form the
tradition tells us that Dante in his youth took the habit of
the Friars Minor, but left the Order before the time came for
taking the vows. The earliest witness to this tradition is the
fourteenth century commentator, Francesco da Buti; and he
thus explains Danti's declaration in the episode in the Inferno,
when he gives Virgil the cord to cast into the abyss:
I had a cord around me girt, with which
At one time I had thought to overcome
The leopard with the painted skin. 1
The cord, according to da Buti, is the Franciscan cord which
Dante had worn as a Franciscan novice: it k the symbol of
chastity as "the leopard with the painted skin" is, in mediaeval
language, the symbol of incontinency. Yet it is to be noted
that Virgil uses this cord to summon the Geryon, the per-
sonification of Fraud, the antitype of the Lady Poverty of St.
Francis* love.
Elsewhere Dante speaks of "the high virtue" virginal
chastitywhich had thrilled him in his early youth. 3 But
1 Inferno XVI., 106-108. * Purgatorio XXX., 40-42.
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 793
whether da Bull's assertion that Dante was at one time a
novice in the Franciscan Order was merely a deduction from
these and similar passages in the Divina Commedia, or an
explanation given in the light of certain knowledge, it is im-
possible to say. Still it must be remembered that da Buti
was born only three years after Dante's death, and may well
have been acquainted with those who knew Dante in life.
Not until the sixteenth century do we come upon the
further statement that late in life, whilst he was at Ravenna,
Dante became a Franciscan Tertiary. Our authority for this
assertion is the Franciscan chronicler, Mariano of Florence,
who, in his Chronicle of the Third Order, writes: "The poet,
Dante, whilst dwelling in the city of Ravenna and giving his
mind to the spiritual life, took the habit of the third order
and at the end, when dying, took the habit of the Friar's
Minor and was buried in the convent of St. Francis." 3 Mariano
died in 1523. He was a painstaking compiler of the traditions
of his Order and country. It has been said that "it is difficult
to harmonize Fra Mariano's statement that he (Dante) was
buried in the Franciscan habit, with that of the poet's con-
temporary, Giovanni Villani, that he was buried "in the garb
of a poet and a great philosopher:"* and the difficulty may
perhaps be held to throw doubt upon the whole statement of
Fra Mariano. But even admitting the accuracy of Villani
and he is not always accurate it should be noticed that the
Franciscan chronicler says no more than that Dante was
clothed in the habit of the Friars Minor as he lay dying. To
die clothed in the habit of one of the Mendicant Orders, was a
privilege frequently asked for in the fourteenth century.
The evidence, however, that Dante was a Franciscan Ter-
tiary, resting as it does on the authority of a chronicler who
wrote two hundred years after the poet's death, 5 is too slight
This chronicle is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence. I quote
from Franco D'Adige: Dante Alighieri fu del Terz'Ordine Francescano? (Milan,
1919.) A similar statement is quoted by Fra Antonio Tognocchi in 1580, from
another chronicle of Mariano, now lost: De Origine, nobilitate et excellcntia Tusciee.
* Edmund Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, p. 201.
I am not unaware of the supposed portrait of Dante in the allegory of Chastity
over the tomb of St. Francis of Asslsi. Were the figure of the Tertiary in the allegory
an undoubted portrait of the poet, and were the fresco painted by Giotto as was
formerly assumed, the question discussed in the text would have but one answer.
But it is very doubtful whether the allegories are Giotto's work; and the resemblance
between the Tertiary figure in the allegory and the authentic portraits of Dante is
open to question.
794 DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS [Sept.,
to warrant the certainty assumed by many Franciscan writers;
though, on the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore the
strong tradition which Mariano probably voiced in his chron-
icles.
There can, however, be no question as to the spell which
St. Francis and the Franciscan legend cast over the mind of
the singer of the Divina Commedia.
It has been said that without Francis there would have
been no Dante; but as Mr. Gardner remarks: "It is safer to
say that, without Francis, we should have had a different
Dante." 6 For Dante expresses in masterly fashion the uni-
versal idealism of the Middle Ages in its various forms : he is
the sovereign poet of the Middle Ages, not of the Franciscan
movement. Yet because that movement so greatly influenced
the world which Dante knew, and was itself a supreme expres-
sion of the mediaeval soul in its religious aspiration, the poet
felt its fascination and was caught up into its spirit.
To Dante, as to many others before him, Francis and
Dominic were the twin heaven-sent leaders, raised up by
God to purify the mediaeval Church of its evils and corrup-
tions and to show the way towards its spiritual renovation:
and it is in this light that Dante sees them in his own pas-
sionate longing for a Christendom true to its own principles.
Thus it is that he introduces the panegyric of the two
Saints :
"The Providence which governeth the world, . . .
That she, the spouse of Him Who with loud cries
Espoused her to Himself with blessed blood,
Might forward go towards her Well-Belov'd
Secure within herself and faithfuller to Him
Two Princes did ordain on her behalf,
Who on this side and that should be for guides,
The one was all seraphic in his ardor,
The other by his wisdom on the earth
Became a splendor of cherubic light." 7
In the seraphic love of Francis, spurning all earthly gains
for Christ's dear sake, and in the intelligent knowledge of the
Truth which Dominic sought to spread, Dante saw the two
supreme remedies for the evils under which the mediaeval
Church seemed tottering, to the ruin of the souls she was
6 Op. cit., p. 185. ^Paradise XI., 28-39.
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 795
meant to save. Dante's own thought was steeped in the "cheru-
bic light" he looked for in the sons of St. Dominic : yet it is to
be noted that in the praises of this Saint which he puts upon
the lips of St. Bonaventura, the poet emphasizes the unworld-
liness, akin to that of St. Francis, in which the Founder of
the Dominican Order set out to teach the world.
Not for the fortune of the next vacancy,
Not for the tithes belonging to God's poor,
He made demand; but for leave he sought
To fight against an erring world. 8
It is in the unworldliness of the two Saints, as contrasted
with the worldliness he sees ruling in the Church of his time,
that Dante finds the common bond which makes "their glory
shine in union." 9 But whereas this unworldliness in Dominic
issues in the ideal apostle of the Truth, in Francis it gives
the world the ideal lover of the poverty and cross of Christ.
Dante's knowledge of St. Francis and his ideal had evi-
dently been gained by an intimate study of the available docu-
ments bearing upon Franciscan history. For the story of St.
Francis, his main source is the Legenda written by St. Bona-
ventura: yet he evidently was acquainted with other sources,
particularly with the writings of the "Spirituals," the party in
the Franciscan Order which advocated a stricter adherence to
the "primitive observance," and amongst whom the early tra-
ditions of the Order were passionately cherished.
The prologue of his panegyric on St. Francis in the Para-
diso, is reminiscent of one of the most beautiful praises of
the Lady Poverty, by St. Francis, recorded in the Actus S.
Francisci as spoken by the Saint himself. The Saint addresses
Brother Masseo: "My dearest and most beloved brother, the
measure of beatific poverty is so honorable and divine that we
are not worthy to possess it in our vile vessels; since poverty is
that heavenly virtue by which all earthly and transitory things
are trodden under foot; through which all hindrances are
taken from our midst that the human mind may be conjoined
to the Lord, the Eternal God. This it is which makes the soul
placed here on earth to hold converse with the angels in
heaven."
In contrast to the lover of poverty soaring to converse
" Paradiso XII., 93-96. * Ibid., 36. 10 Actus, cap. XIII. (ed. Sabatier, p. 48.)
796 DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS [Sept.,
with the angels, Dante sees the earth-drawn multitude around
him, and cries out :
Insensate care of mortals! Oh, how false
The arguments which make thee downward beat
Thy wings! One followed after law, and one
Was bent upon the Aphorisms; one
Followed the priesthood; yet another sought
By violence or sophistry to rule:
And one sought plunder; one, affairs of State;
One tangled in the pleasures of the flesh
Lay moiling: one to ease abandoned him:
The whilst, from all these made free, was I
With Beatrice in the high heaven above,
And there thus gloriously received. 11
In like manner, Dante in his praise of St. Francis, con-
stantly echoes the thought and frequently the very words of
the Franciscan Legends. Thus, in his comparison of Francis
to the sun rising in the East, there is an echo of St. Bona-
ventura's description of Francis "as the morning star (who)
by his dazzling radiance led into the light them that sat in
darkness." 12 The verses already quoted, in which Francis
and Dominic are described, the one as seraphic in his ardor,
the other as a splendor of cherubic light, do but reproduce
the thought and words of a passage in the Arbor vitsz Cruci-
fix& of the "Spiritual" Franciscan, Ubertino da Casale : whilst
probably from the same writer Dante derived his fine con-
ception of the mystic marriage of Francis and the Lady
Poverty :
"Not yet was he far distant from his rising
When he began to make the earth to feel
From his great power a certain strengthening;
A youth, he rode in war against his father,
For a lady's sake, to whom as unto death
No man unbars his gate for his own pleasure.
And straightway in his bishop's court
Et coram patre, was united to her
And then from day to day loved her more strongly.
She, reft of her first husband, 13 scorned, obscure,
A thousand and a hundred years and more,
Until he 14 came, remained as yet unwooed
u Paradiso XL, 1-12. " Leg. S. Bonaventura, Prologus. /. e., Christ.
14 /. e., Francis.
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 797
And nought availed her the report that she
With Amyclas was found unterrified
At the voice of him who struck the world with terror;
And nought availed to be so constant, bold,
That, e'en when Mary yet remained below,
Together she with Christ did mount His cross.
But lest I should proceed too covertly,
Forthwith in open speech these lovers take
For Francis and for Poverty." 15
The wooing of the Lady Poverty by St. Francis is the sub-
ject of the earliest Franciscan allegory known as Sacrum
Commercium Sancti Francisci cum Domina Paupertate; but
Dante's fine conception of Poverty mounting the cross with
Christ whilst even Our Lady must stand at the foot, is un-
doubtedly taken directly from the prayer which Ubertino da
Casale puts on the lips of St. Francis; in which occurs this
passage:
Even Thy own Mother (who alone did faithfully honor
Thee and with grievous sorrow share Thy Passion) even
she, I say, could not by reason of the height of the Cross,
reach up unto Thee, but the Lady Poverty in all her Penury,
like a most dear Servitor, did there hold Thee in an even
closer embrace and join herself more and more nearly to
Thy sufferings. For the which reason she did not wait to
smooth Thy Cross, nor to give it even the rudest prepara-
tion, nor, it is thought did she even make sufficient nails
for Thy wounds, nor sharpen or polish them, but furnished
three only, all rough and jagged and blunted, to support
Thee in Thy martyrdom . . . and in the close embrace of
this Thy Spouse, Thou didst yield up the Ghost. 16
It is, too, from the Sacrum Commercium that Dante de-
rives the idea of the inward spirit of the Lady Poverty em-
braced by St. Francis and his early companions the joyous-
ness and cheerfulness which lie in the heart of the voluntary
poor:
"Their harmony and joyous countenances
Their love and wonder and their tender looks
Became (to others) cause of holy thoughts." 17
18 Paradiso XL, 55-75.
16 Vide Mr. Montgomery Carmichael's translation of the Sacrum Commercium,
entitled The Lady Poverty (London, 1901). Appendix I., pp. 187, 188. Cf. Ibid.,
Chapter vi., pp. 37, 38. "Paradiso XI., 76-78.
798 DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS [Sept.,
Other evidences of Dante's intimate acquaintance with
Franciscan documents suggest themselves; as the incident in
the Inferno, where "one of the black cherubim" convicts,
Guido da Montefeltro, in words reminiscent of a passage in
St. Francis' letter To All the Faithful. 18
Apart from verbal quotations, Dante's treatment of the
sin of Avarice in the fifth terrace of Purgatory, is imbued with
the teaching of St. Francis. As Mr. Edmund Gardner has re-
marked : "It is in accordance with the spirit of St. Francis that
Dante makes liberality altogether subordinate to voluntary
poverty as the virtue contrary to avarice." 19 The poet quotes
two examples of voluntary poverty, the Blessed Virgin and
Fabricius, to one of liberality, St. Nicholas of Bari. But
further reminiscent of the Franciscan message, are the salu-
tations of "Peace" which pass between Statius and Virgil;
and the ushering in of this meeting with the angelic outburst :
"Glory to God in the highest." 20 St. Francis' devotion to the
poverty of Bethlehem was intimately connected with his devo-
tion to the Prince of Peace; and he conceived it as the special
apostolate of his brethren to preach to the world of the Peace
and Concord which Christ came to bring to men. Avarice, to
the mind of the Seraphic Saint, was the mother of the dis-
cords and hates which made the Italy of his time a battle-
ground, and stirred her sons to an unholy restlessness; whilst
in the poverty which conquers greed and in the "free-giving"
or liberality which goes with evangelical poverty, he saw the
beginning of the reign of peace God's Christmas gift offered
to men.
The glowing devotion with which Dante sings the praise
of St. Francis, shows itself, too, in his brief reference to St.
Clare. The six lines of praise which the poet puts on the lips
of Piccarda in the sphere of the moon, are perhaps the most
complete summing up of the Saint's life and work:
"Perfected life and high desert enheaventh
A lady more aloft by whose (pure) rule
Upon your earth are they who clothe themselves
And wear the veil, that to their dying, they
May watch and sleep with the Bridegroom Who accepts
All vows which to His pleasure love conforms." 21
18 Inferno XXVII., pp. 112-123. " Dante and the Mystics, p. 205.
30 Purgatorio XX. and XXI. Paradiso III., 97-102. >*
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 799
As we have said, Dante saw in St. Francis one of the
two great leaders raised up by God to purify the Church and
restore to it the beauty of the first Christian days. In the
voluntary poverty of St. Francis, transfused with the ardor
of love, the poet recognized the potent remedy for the evils
of avarice and godless ambition, which to his mind were
bringing disaster upon the Christian world: and to the Order
founded by the Saint he looked for a continuation of his
mission.
But, unhappily, Dante lived at a time when both the great
Mendicant Orders had fallen from their first fervor, and were
no longer guiding the chariot of the Church in the simplicity
and unworldliness of their founders' ideals. This falling away
is the subject of two laments voiced respectively by St. Thomas
Aquinas and St. Bonaventura. St. Thomas, who had sung the
praises of St. Francis, laments the decadence of the Domin-
icans; St. Bonaventura, who tells the praises of St. Dominic,
laments the decadence of the Franciscans. 22
In making the two saints the intellectual lights of their
two orders thus utter the praise of the two founders and
castigate the unworthy followers, Dante may have been in-
spired by the custom according to which the Franciscans and
Dominicans exchanged pulpits on their founders' feast days:
or he may have meant to rebuke the unedifying rivalries,
which at the time existed between the two Orders.
In his lament over the decline of the Franciscans, Dante
shows himself well acquainted with the conflicting parties and
ideals which for sometime past had divided the Order into
opposing camps and had sapped its spiritual energy. These
were the Fratres de Convento, who had all accepted certain
relaxations of the original Rule of the Order, particularly as
regards Poverty: and not a few of them had abandoned the
primitive rule of corporate poverty, except in name. And
there were the "Spirituals" those who held to the primitive
observance and who mostly were found in small houses and
hermitages. Amongst these, too, there was an extreme party
who in their zeal for the letter of the Rule lost "the sweet
reasonableness," which was a characteristic trait of St. Fran-
cis, and these developed a highly controversial spirit. Of this
extreme wing of the Spirituals, was Ubertino da Casale, the
"Paradiso XL, XII.
800 DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS [Sept.,
author of the Arbor Vit% Crucifixae Jesu. Ubertino had at
first adhered to the party of the relaxed frairs, but coming
under the influence of the Blessed Angelo of Foligno, the
Franciscan-tertiary mystic, he joined himself to the Spirituals
and was sent by his superiors to the retreat on Mount Alverna,
the holy mountain of the Franciscans. There he wrote his
famous book at once a protest against the policy of the re-
laxed friars and a clarion-call to his own party. The book
is valuable to the student of Franciscan history, because Uber-
tino drew largely from the early Franciscan documents the
ancient biographies of St. Francis and the writings of the
Saint's companions. At the time that Ubertino wrote, these
early documents were already scarce owing to the ban placed
upon them by the authorities in the Order because of the use
made of them by the Spiritual party. Under the stress of con-
troversy, Ubertino veered more and more towards the extreme
wing of the Spirituals. In 1317 he left the Order: the attitude
of Pope John XXII. on the question of Poverty had entirely
discouraged him; and in 1325, four years after Dante's death,
he attached himself to Louis of Bavaria in his conflict with
the Pope.
With this explanation in mind, we may now turn to
Dante's lament over the decline of the Franciscans, which he
puts on the lips of St. Bonaventura, at the conclusion of the
panegyric on St. Dominic:
"If such one wheel was of the chariot 28
In which the holy Church defended her
And won in open field her earthly strife
Clearly enough it should appear to thee,
The other's excellence which Thomas told
So courteously ere my coming.
But now the track hath been abandoned, which
Was made by the circumference of the wheel,
So that there's mould where erstwhile was firm ground.
His family which (formerly) marched straight,
Their feet upon his footprints, so turned round
That toe now striketh 'gainst the heel's imprint;
And now will soon be seen the harvesting
Of this ill-culture when the tares will wail
83 The ngure of the Church militant as a chariot with the Dominican and Fran-
ciscan Orders as the two wheels, is adapted by Dante from a Dominican legend.
Cf. E. G. Gardner, op. cit., p. 227.
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 801
Because the barn is ta'en away from them 24
I grant that who would search our volume through,
Taking it leaf by leaf, might find a page
Where he might read : I am as I was wont;
Yet not from Acquasparta 25 nor Casale, whence
Come such as read our Rule, that shirketh one
Whilst yet the other it would tighter draw/* 26
From his rejection of Acquasparta and Ubertino da
Casale as also from his subsequent praise of St. Bonaventura,
it is evident that Dante regarded the "Seraphic Doctor" as the
true representative of the spirit of St. Francis amidst the
troublous times on which the Franciscan Order fell after the
death of its Founder.
It is suggestive that St. Bonaventura has as companions
in heaven the friars, Illuminato and Agostino,
"Who of the first unshod poor brethren were,
That with the cord became the friends of God."
And it is Dante's praise of the Saint that
". . . In great offices
He ever placed behind the left-hand care." 27
It says much for Dante's loyalty to the Church that he
dissociated himself from Ubertino da Casale and the extrem-
ists of the Spiritual party : the more so since Ubertino's book,
Arbor Vitse Crucifixse, is one of the undoubted sources of the
Divina Commedia and in no small measure influenced Dante's
thought.
Dante's admiration for St. Bonaventura is evident; but it
is difficult to say how far he was influenced by the Seraphic
"The meaning of this line is disputed. Some suppose it to mean that the
support of the Church (the barn) will be taken away from the extremists; others
would have it that it refers to the decree of the Council of Vienne in 1312, which
forbade the friars to store up large quantities of corn in their granaries. Cf. E. G.
Gardner, op. cit. t p. 224. But may not Dante again be quoting and adapting the
words of St. Francis: "There are mutual obligations between the world and the
brethren: they owe to the world a good example, the world owes them the provision
of necessaries. When they belie their faith and cease to give a good example, the
world, by a just judgment, draws back its hand from them." (Celano XL.) In this
case "the barn" would symbolize the goods the relaxed friars were storing up;
and their punishment would be directly related to their sin.
"Matteo d' Acquasparta was General of the Order 1287-1289. He belonged to
the party of the relaxation, yet seems to have been moderate in his opposition to
the Spirituals.
Paradiso XII., 106-126.
"Paradise XII., 127-132. "The left-hand care: equals temporal cares." Yet vide
E. G. Gardner, op. cit. t p. 256.
VOL. cxm. 51
802 DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS [Sept.,
Doctor's teaching. There are many parallelisms between the
thought of the poet and that of the Saint apart from what
concerns the Franciscan Order; but in most cases it is possible
that both were developing a similar line of thought from a
common source St. Augustine or St. Bernard or Hugh of St.
Victor. Nevertheless, that Dante was acquainted with St.
Bonaventura's theological writings is clear from the grouping
of the spirits who form, as it were, the Seraphic Doctor's court,
amongst whom are some from whom the Saint largely drew
his doctrine Hugh of St. Victor, St. Anselm, Rabanus Maurus,
St. John Ghrysostom; and, consequently, it is possible that
Mr. Edmund Gardner underestimates the poet's debt to the
Saint. 28 In any case, the parallelism of ideas indicates a close
kinship of spirit which largely accounts for Dante's admira-
tion of him whom "love maketh beautiful." 29
There yet remains to be mentioned one other probable
Franciscan source of the Divina Commedia, to which Dr.
Moore has called attention in his Studies on Dante. 30 This
source is a popular treatise on Our Lady, at one time attrib-
uted to St. Bonaventura, but now known to have been written
by that saint's contemporary, friar Conrad of Saxony. The
title is, Speculum Beatze Marx Virginis. 31 In a "reading"
(lectio) on the words, Benedict a tu in mulieribus, Friar Con-
rad sets forth the specific virtues by which the seven capital
sins are overcome; and shows how of all these virtues Our
Lady is the type. This "reading" is followed by another, on
the words, Benedictus fructus ventris tui, in which the writer
discourses on the birth of Christ in the souls of the faithful
by means of these seven virtues as against the seven vices.
The conquering virtues are thus set forth in order: humility
against pride; neighborly love against envy; meekness against
anger; the works of mercy against spiritual sloth; liberality
and contempt of earthly goods against avarice; temperance
against gluttony; continency against sensuality.
In the Purgatorio, Dante adopts precisely the same
scheme in his conception of the seven terraces where the souls
undergo their purgation according to their dominant sin on
*C/. Dante and the Mystics, pp. 247-256.
29 Paradise XII., 31. "L'amor che mi fa bella," the opening words of St. Bona-
ventura's discourse.
80 Second Series, pp. 194, 268a.
81 A new edition was published in 1904 by the Franciscan Fathers of Quaracchi,
Bibliotheca Franciscan Asatica, Tome II.
1921.] DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS 803
earth, and are purified by their growth in the love of the
contrasted virtue; and it is to be noted that in regard to each
virtue, Dante cites Our Lady as an example, almost in the very
words of the Speculum. That beautiful passage in the purga-
tion of avarice:
"Sweet Mary,
so poor wast thou
As can be seen from that (poor) hostelry
Where thou thy holy Burden didst lay down," 32
is but a paraphrase of an argument of Conrad of Saxony:
"The poor shepherds found the poor mother and the poor
infant in a poor place. For, indeed, the dear poor mother
would certainly have had a goodly hostelry if she had not
been poor." 33
It would be interesting to know how far, if at all, Dante
was influenced in his conception of the Divina Commedia, by
the Franciscan preachers and poets who went before him.
"The Heavenly Jerusalem" and "the Infernal City, Babylon,"
were favorite themes with many of the Franciscan preachers.
The famous preacher, Friar Berthold of Ratisbon, treated
these subjects with a wealth of imagery inspired by the book
of The Apocalypse but, especially in his description of
heaven, pointedly set forth with reference to the social con-
ditions of the time. The poems of Fra Giocomino da Verona,
who wrote towards the end of the thirteenth century, have
been spoken of as one of the sources of the Divina Commedia;
and, undoubtedly, there are close resemblances of imagery
and ideas as between Dante and the friar-poet. Nor must we
forget Fra Jacopone da Todi when we speak of Dante's pre-
cursors.
But we have reached the limit set by the supervising
editor; and so must bid the reader farewell.
Purgatorio XX., 19-24.
33 Speculum, ed. Quaracchi, p. 52. The argument for the Speculum as the source
of Dante's scheme, is strengthened by the fact that St. Thomas, Dante's usual guide
in theology, has a slightly different order of the vices and virtues.
DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY.
BY CHARLES PHILLIPS, M.A.
|OR many years I was afraid of Dante. I kept
away from the Divine Comedy: it did not invite.
It was not until I was out of high school that I
saw anything in Dante except Dore's pictures.
Then it was the description of the "gloomy wood"
that attracted me, and I stumbled through pages on pages
trying to visualize the scenes the poet paints by catching at
every hint of natural scenery, every tangible sign of life he
proffered the panther, the lion, the she-wolf; the mountain
with
his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam
Who leads all travelers safe.
In time, of course, I read Dante and studied the Divine
Comedy. But it was not until I revisited Italy and began
to read him in his familiar haunts by the Arno and in the
Apennines, that he seemed to address me fully and in his
natural voice. Then I learned how simply and plainly Dante
speaks the common language of us all, and how his eye not
only penetrates to the soul, but sees and records the everyday
things that all of us see.
This has been one of the best surprises of my life to find
in the poet of the Divine Comedy a pastoral singer, who, far
from wandering forever aloof on eagle heights, can walk our
own daily path with just as sure a foot, and can take me by
the hand just as gently as Virgil took him and show me old-
fashioned charms and beauties of the earth with just as divin-
ing touch as he reveals supernatural wonders.
The more I read Dante now, the more companionable
and human he becomes. Nothing in nature is too little for
his notice, nothing too common for his eye to see or his song
to glorify. He knows the birds, the animals, the trees, the
ilowers, with the intimate acquaintance of the genuine nature
lover, and he celebrates them with a lyric note which runs
like a lovely minor chord through all the sonorous music of
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 805
his major composition. He sings the brooklet as well as the
sea, the light-winged swallow and the humming bee as well as
the falcon and the eagle.
It was Dante's love of birds that first woke me to his
pastoral qualities. In one passage of the Purgatorio he flashes
this true little picture of bird life in contrast with the porten-
tous scene of the repentant souls who, "their song deserting,
hasten to the mountain side"
As a wild flock of pigeons to their food
Collected, blade or tares, without their accustomed pride,
In still and quiet sort,
If aught alarm them, suddenly desert
Their meal, assailed by more important cares.
This is a scene familiar to anyone who has ever kept
pigeons or been where pigeons are and has scattered food to
them either in his own back yard, or perhaps in the Piazza
San Marco at Venice. But here in Florence this passage takes
on even a more intimate significance; for the pigeon flocks
that fly about the court in front of the Uffizi Gallery and
around the Piazza del Duomo strutting along the high cor-
nices and fluttering down to the pavement with a soft whir-
ring clamor when anyone throws them bread or grain these
pigeons of Florence are as popular and well known in Italy
as the famous Venetian doves. They have been here from
time immemorial, and they certainly are the descendants of
the pigeons of Dante's day. He knew them, in that happy time
before he went out of his native town an exile, doomed to
wander the face of the earth homeless and destitute: in the
days when, according to tradition, he sat in the shade along
the north wall of the Piazza del Duomo and watched the
builders at work on the great multi-marbled cathedral.
Again, in the Inferno, Dante sees birds in flight when
the lost souls of carnal sinners in the Second Circle are blown
about by the "tyrannous gust" of the fitful winds. This pic-
ture of coveys of birds traversing the sky is, in fact, one of
the poet's favorites. He sees them
from river banks
Arisen, now in round, now lengthened troop
Array their flight,
806 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
and again:
as cranes
Chanting their dolorous notes, traverse the sky,
Stretched out in long array.
To this day, if you walk out beyond Dante's city at sunset,
along the banks of the river to the sandy bottom lands of the
lower Valdarno, you will see cranes rising thus just as the
poet observed them and how closely and accurately he ob-
served them ! six hundred years ago.
But these are sombre touches of bird life. Contrast now
the exquisite note which the poet strikes in those most beau-
tiful passages of the Inferno in which the tragedy of Francesca
da Rimini and her lover, Paolo, is recited. He beholds the
unhappy pair :
As doves
By fond desire invited, on wide wings
And firm, to their sweet nest returning home,
Cleave the air, wafted by their will along.
The poet's eye was, indeed, exceptionally keen for the life
and movement of birds. He sees the rooks
at dawn of day
Bestirring them to dry their feathers chill,
Some speeding their way afield, while homeward some
Returning, cross their flight; while some abide
And wheel around their airy lodge.
Dante rode to the hunt, too, but when I see Dante
at the hunt, his eye, to me, marks not so keenly the flight
of the quarry's wings as the beat of its frightened heart.
He loved the wild furtive folk of the wood and the air. But
I think he did not love the falcon or the hound overmuch
"the savage hound" that "snatches the leveret panting 'twixt
his jaws."
Many passages reveal the sharp and recording eye of
the true nature lover; but the finest and tenderest of the bird
pictures of Dante is this little drama of the mother and her
fledglings
who, midst the leafy bower
Has in her nest sat darkling through the night
With her sweet brood, impatient to descry
Their wishing looks and to bring home their food,
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 807
In the fond quest unconscious of her toil-
She, of the time prevenient, on the spray
That overhangs their couch, with watchful gaze
Expects the sun; nor ever till the dawn
Reinoveth from the east her eager gaze.
Only a true initiate of nature could chronicle such an in-
timate record of dumb life. Dante, known in this manner,
is no longer stern and terrible and remote; nor is it diffi-
cult any longer, knowing him thus, to follow wherever he
may lead, no matter how transcendentally high or deep the
path.
According to tradition only the first seven cantos of the
Divine Comedy were written in Florence. Then came Dante's
exile, his twenty years of wandering : "As a stranger, through
almost every region to which our language reaches, I have
gone about as a beggar, showing against my will the wound of
fortune." Where those wanderings took him is largely con-
jecture. We know that he begins the eighth canto with the
words, "My theme renewing." And we know the story of
Gemma, his wife, hiding all his papers in a chest when he was
driven from his native town and his house was raided, in
March, 1302; then finding them and having them sent to him
some five years later, the manuscript of the first seven cantos
among them. But speculation must fill in many spaces in the
intervals between that time and his death, especially when it
figures on the actual place of the writing of the Divine
Comedy. Of one thing, however, we can be sure that a great
portion of that time of exile was spent on the open road,
traveling from one town to another, tarrying along the coun-
tryside, seeking shelter where he could. We trace his path
from Siena to Arezzo; from Arezzo up to the little Church of
San Godenzo, a point in the Tuscan Apennines where a meet-
ing of the Florentine exiles was held on June 8, 1302; to
Forli; to Verona; up into the mountains again, to Sarzana, and
to the Benedictine Convent of Santa Croce, where, as the
story goes, he once made his appearance, silent and unknown,
answering with only the one word, "Peace," when asked what
it was he desired, but leaving with the monks a portion of his
poem. We follow him thence out of Italy into France, to
Paris; back to Italy again . . . and so on through all the
years of his wandering until he rests finally at Ravenna,
808 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
where he died in 1321. It is this record of life in the open that
is revealed in the innumerable pastoral passages of his epic
poem.
He longed for his native town and thought ever of it with
sadness and bitterness. In De Vulgari Eloquentia he pities
those who, like himself, languishing in exile, can revisit their
homes "only in dreams." He loved the old tawny colored
river beside which he was born "by Arno's pleasant stream."
But when the Florentine powers offered him liberty to return
on condition that he abjectly degrade himself before his fel-
low citizens, by performing a public penance in the ancient
church of San Giovanni, where in infancy he had been bap-
tized, his whole soul blazed up as he answered back: "What?
Can I not everywhere gaze upon the sun and stars? Can
I not under any sky meditate on most precious truths without
rendering myself ignominious? Bread will not fail me!"
His manhood was above price; and knowing him now as the
wrapt devotee he was of nature in all her moods and colors,
it is not hard to believe that, rejecting a shameful freedom in
his native city, he turned with all the more heart hunger to
the freedom of hill and wood and stars.
Thus the picture comes of Dante sharing the roof of the
peasant and the meagre loaf of the mountaineer: sleeping
beside the shepherd on the hillside,
the swain that lodges out all night
In quiet by his flock, lest beast of prey
Disperse them;
studying the starry night very likely making the poor rustic
marvel open-mouthed what manner of man was this who
could read the very heavens!
There is a feeling of many a night-long vigil in Dante's
pastoral lines. We can see the wanderer living out whole
days alone, or with whatever company the countryside might
afford, following the peasant to his hut, seeking the night's
lodging for which he is forced to beg
In silence and in solitude we went,
One first, the other following his step,
As minor friars journeying on the road;
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 809
or it might be
With equal pace, as oxen at the yoke,
I with that laden spirit journeying on.
Now, indeed, can we feel with him the great, proud-souled
one!
How salt the savor of another's bread,
How hard the passage to descend and climb
By other's stairs.
But with him, likewise, we can forget weariness and soreness
of heart and all "man's inhumanity to man" in the sweet,
healing contemplation of untrammeled nature. Resting his
tired body on some green knoll, he marks how the sheep
. . . slip from forth their folds, by one
Or pairs, or three at once: meanwhile the rest
Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose
To ground, and what the foremost does that do
The others, gathering round her if she stop,
Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern.
He knows all the comings and goings of the countryman, his
hopes and fears, his feelings and emotions. Here, for example,
is a little pastoral sketch which stands out like an exquisite
water color in the vast Dante gallery. The first hint of spring
is in the air "the year's early nonnage, when the sun tempers
his tresses in Aquarius' urn." It is very early in the morning
When as the rime upon the earth puts on
Her dazzling sister's image, but not long
Her milder sway endures: then riseth up
The cottager, whom fails his wintry store,
And looking out beholds the plain around
All whitened; whence impatiently he smites
His thigh, and to his hut returning in
There paces to and fro, wailing his lot
As a discomfited and helpless man.
Then comes he forth again, and feels new hope
Spring in his bosom, finding e'en thus soon
The world hath changed its countenance: grasps his crook
And forth to pastures drives his little flock.
How much of Dante's days of exile were thus spent in the
mountains or on the countryside there is, of course, no exact
telling. But that he lived among the tillers of the soil and the
810 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
herders of the flocks, that he intimately knew the laborers in
field and vineyard, is plentifully evident from the pastoral
scenes which occur throughout the Divine Comedy. Heat of
summer beats on him. He hears in the warm silence the tune-
ful monotone of the cataract,
the water's din
As down it fell
Resounding like the hum of swarming bees;
or his fine ear catches the murmur of the bees themselves
Amid the vernal sweets alighting now,
Now clustering, where their fragrant labor glows.
These are the solstice days in sun drenched Italy,
that season when the sun least veils
His face that lightens all, what time the fly
Gives way to the shrill knat . . .
And there were some who in the shady place
Beneath the rock were standing, as a man
Through idleness might stand. Among them one
Who seemed to be much wearied sat him down
And with his arms did fold his knees about.
The picture changes. It is
near that hour
When heaven is minded that o'er all the world
Her own deep calm should brood.
Can you not see him, Dante, the man, exile, and poet, at the
warm close of day "upon some cliff reclined . . . beneath him
seeing fireflies innumerous spangling o'er the vale," and with
the peasant toiler beside him looking out over "vineyard and
tilth where his day labor lies," hearing in the oncoming dusk
the first cheery song of evening "when peeps the frog croak-
ing above the wave?"
Darkness comes down, and the Divine Bard once more
begins his night-long, his life-long vigil, pondering the story
of mankind under the far lights of heaven. The stars come
out; how wonderfully the whole poem is lit with "the beauti-
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 811
ful lights of heaven!" Do you recall how each of its major
divisions ends with an aspiration to the stars? When Dante
and Virgil emerged at last from the black pits of the Inferno
those
beautiful lights of heaven
Dawned through a circular opening in the cave:
Thence issuing we again beheld the stars.
Out of the troubled pathways of the Purgatorio he rose "pure
and made apt for mounting to the stars." And in the end
the last note of his song that "failed the towering fantasy" of
Paradise celebrates the Divine Love "that moves the sun in
heaven and all the stars."
I picture him in his exile studying the bright firmament.
How far do his thoughts range in these solitary contempla-
tions of man's eternal soul? How much of the Divine Comedy
did he think out and compose in his pastoral wanderings and
his hillside vigils? He sounds the deeps of hell and mounts
to the uttermost heights of heaven, setting our hearts in a
maze of wonder and questioning. Then, suddenly, his eye
marks and his own questioning spirit ponders that always
strange and always mysterious tragedy of the heavens the
shooting star:
As oft along the still and pure serene
At nightfall glides a sudden trail of fire
Attracting with involuntary heed
The eye that follows it, erewhile at rest,
And seems some star that shifted place in heaven,
Only that whence it kindles none is lost,
And it is soon extinct.
Is that the whole story of man? he makes us ask only a little
light blazing momentarily across the infinite, neither the be-
ginning nor the end of which ever can be known? Faith
answers. In the vast confusion of planet and galaxy, Dante
reads plan and purpose for us and, forthwith, sings it in his
immortal strain. He is at once the true and the ideal nature
poet, invoking the earth to give testimony to the heavens, and
the heavens to reveal earth to itself. At such moments it is
not so much the stars that Dante sees as the Hand that sets
and moves them:
812 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
and in that depth
Saw, in one volume clasped of love, whatever
The universe unfolds : all properties
Of substance and of accident, beheld
Compounded, yet one individual light
The whole.
Dante is the poet of hope. He may conjure about us the
most impenetrable night. But always there is the dawn and
the sunburst. In his own exile, when better times seemed for
a while to be promised him and Italy, he reverted to the fancy
of morning to express his joy. "A new day is beginning to
break!" he writes in his Letter to the Princes and Peoples of
Italy. "A new day, showing forth the dawn which even now
is dispersing the darkness of our long night of tribulation.
Already the breezes from the east are springing up, the face
of the heavens grows rosy." So if we may call him, in the
spiritual sense, the poet of hope, in the pastoral sense he might
well be named the poet of morning. The Divine Comedy is
full of beautiful descriptions of dawn, the coming of day, the
passing of darkness and the rebirth of light and life. Pictur-
ing him, then, the exile, fallen asleep under the stars, we
can see him likewise waking with a new song in his heart as
daylight breaks. This is the hour of renewed energy, when,
under
Aurora's white and vermeil tinctured cheek
To orange turned . . .
... to harbinger the dawn, springs up
On freshened wing the air of May, and breathes
Of fragrance all impregn'd with herb of flowers.
In the years after, wrapt in his supernatural visioning, he re-
called many such a morning as this:
I have beheld ere now at break of day
The eastern clime all roseate, and the sky
Opposed one deep and beautiful serene;
And the sun's face so shaded and with mists
Attempered at her rising that the eye
Long while endured the sight.
In the meadows of dawn, we need no fanciful vision to
hear, as Dante heard,
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 813
the lark
That warbling in the air expatiates long,
Then thrilling out his last sweet melody
Drops satiate with sweetness.
It is not in the meadow only, or by the stream, that Dante
reveals his powers as a nature poet. The sea enters likewise
into his vast universal canvas. He knows the ways of the
boatman as well as of the shepherd. In fact, Dante wrote a
treatise at one time on the relative levels of land and water
on the surface of the earth. But in that he was a mere dis-
putant in a public debate at Mantua. It is as a poet that he
shows his real insight into the common life of "those who go
down to the sea in ships." He likens himself, first of all, in
speaking of his years of exile, to "a ship without sails and
without a rudder driven to various harbors and shores by the
dry wind which blows from pinching poverty." But, like his
busy fellow seamen, Dante made good the days of "that in-
clement time"
Which seafaring men restrains; and in that while
His bark one builds anew, another stops
The ribs of his that many a voyage hath made ;
One hammers at the prow, one at the poop;
This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls;
The mizzen one repairs, and main-sail rent.
In that rapid pen sketch of the daily life of the dweller on the
seacoast a sketch in which is not lacking even the detail of
the boiling pitch "to smear the unsound vessels" one can
readily visualize the wandering poet loitering in the harbor
or sitting by on the beach watching the men at work. Nothing
was commonplace or uninteresting to him. All life absorbed
him.
From some shelter on the shore or perhaps, indeed, ex-
posing his weary body, his thought-worn brow, to the battling
elements, finding refreshment in the buffeting of wind and
rain the poet watches the tempest rage on the waters when
"the north wind blows a blast that scours the sky," and
the lightning in a sudden spleen
Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes
The visive spirits dazzled and bedimmed.
Yet, militant soul though he be, he still seems to love best the
814 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
peace and quiet of the inner harbor and the calm evening
when he hears
the vesper bell afar
Seeming to mourn for the expiring day . . .
. . . the hour that wakens fond desire
In men at sea, and melts the thoughtful heart
Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell.
Of all Dante's references to the sea, however, I like best
that one which recalls his days of exile at Sarzana. He rested
there at the friendly castle of the Malaspini from October,
1306, to the summer of 1307. From the high ramparts of
Moroello's stronghold, looking out over the vast prospect of
hill and plain, the poet could see, laid before him, Tuscany,
on the one hand, and on the other the distant ocean. How
often he must have gazed on that sublime panorama! Here,
surely, he kept his vigil innumerable nights, under the stars,
or watching how
the moon
Doth by the rolling of her heavenly sphere
Hide and reveal the strand unceasingly.
His days in the house of Malaspina were not unhappy. At
least, he was among friends friends, it is easy to believe, who
understood him and who, perhaps, often shared with him in
comprehending silence his delight in nature and the inspiring
scenes around him. A little peace seems to come into his
heart in these surroundings.
Dante spent the last years of his life close to the sea whose
moods and music wove so much of themselves into the rhythm,
as well as the wording of his great song. And it was the sea,
one might say, that laid the hand of death on him in the end-
that fatal journey from Venice to Ravenna, made on foot
during the hot summer months of 1321 along the low malarial
marshlands skirting the Adriatic coast. He never recovered
from the fever contracted on that journey. But at Ravenna
Dante is associated more with the forest than the sea.
The mere mention of Dante and the forest sends us back
to the opening lines of the Divine Comedy, to that "gloomy
wood" whose air of mystery and whose drama of the man lost
in its depths attracts and holds us to our first reading of the
poem. In time, we come to see that trees and woods play a
very important role in the whole scheme of the work. The
1921.] DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY 815
scene of the entire thirteenth canto of the Inferno, for in-
stance, is set in a forest, and a good third of the Purgatorio.
There is a reason for this. However much of the Divine
Comedy was composed in other places, it is safe to say that
the greater part of it was written at Ravenna if not all in the
original, then in revision and expansion. Now, at Ravenna is
to be found one of the great forests of Italy, the Pinetum,
which stretches along the shores of the Adriatic for a distance
of some forty miles. To enjoy thoroughly the Divine Comedy,
to appreciate at their fullest Dante's powers as a nature poet,
one should know something about this forest, the Wood of
Ghiassi, celebrated also by Boccaccio and by Dryden. It had
a very marked influence on Dante's writing. Tradition says
that in the last years of his exile, he spent whole days at a
time in this forest a scene which became to a great extent the
setting for his immortal drama of the soul. He paced these
solitudes, calming his wounded spirit with the hush and shad-
owy music of the wind-stirred pines, and contemplating and
composing cantos of the poem. The legend is easily believed;
for here, as Symonds shows 1 us, we seem to have struck on the
source of innumerable of the similes and fancies employed in
the Divine Comedy. Here, likewise, the poet reveals himself
once more a true chronicler of nature. He makes us feel, as
well as see, the ancient wood
where no track
Of steps had worn a path; not verdant there
The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light
The boughs and tapering, but with knares deformed
And matted thick.
In those unexplored deeps we can find "the doddered oak with
ivy clasped," or, viewing some sturdy trunk "rent from its
fibres by a blast that blows from off the pole," we can feel
the actual impact of the tempest that has smitten the forest
with
a sound that made
Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
That 'gainst the forest driving his full might
Plucks off the branches, beats them down and hurls
Afar; then onward proudly passing sweeps
His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.
1 Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece. Second Series, "Ravenna," pp. 3-5.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
816 DANTE AND PASTORAL POETRY [Sept.,
Once more, however, it is to morning and the singing of
birds that he turns to find his happiest expression, as he
walks among the pines:
Upon their tops the feathered queresters
Applied their wonted art and with full joy
Welcomed the hours of prime and warbled shrill
Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lay
Kept tenor; even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south.
Here Dante strikes all the strings of nature's lyre: wind
and sea, forest and leaf, light and shadow, birdsong and the
pure breath of the open air "the dripping south" they are
all summed up in these nine short lines.
In this scene, alone in the forest, we see Dante at the last,
communing with nature, linking man to God, earth to Heaven,
by the golden chain of his immortal song. His long days in
the open, either solitary or living among the simple folk who
tend their flocks and till their fields, bred in the poet a ter-
rible scorn for the artificialities of city life, a scorn which he
was not slow to express in scourging words. But does that not
prove him, after all, only the greater lover of man himself,
whom he would see lifted out of and above artificialities?
It is not too much to say that, in considering Dante as a pas-
toral poet, he drew nearer both to man and to God the closer
he drew to nature. With that thought we may leave him,
taking as a final token of his love for the simple things of
field and cottage the admonition he gives us in the Paradiso:
And were the world below content to mark
And work on the foundations nature lays,
It would not lack supply of excellence.
EVERYBODY'S DANTE.
BY THE EDITOR.
REAT truths bear commonplace wisdom. All
virtue avoids excess: if it stray beyond the line,
into the too great or the too little, it ceases to be
virtuous: agreeable: useful: beneficial. In this
wider sense recreation is a virtue. Whether
physical or mental, it should be undertaken for itself that is
as recreation. When thus enjoyed, the mind is relaxed: cares
are, for the time, abandoned: problems vanish: refreshment
and peace enter in and the earth is good and the sky smiles.
Relaxation is for all, however great or small their capacity,
and to everyone it brings its own blessing. But it is charac-
teristic of man to overdo things, and today specialization has
entered the field of recreation and killed it. Simplicity and
innocence have fled. The physical training, painstaking prac-
tice, unbroken application necessary for the professional ath-
lete for whom the game is not a recreation, but a business, is
sought by all. We have grown so unvirtuous in our recreation
that we mar it by excess. So one may reasonably ask if much
of modern sport has not exceeded its purpose. Is not the hap-
pier group that crowd of boys and men throwing horseshoes
as quoits upon the rude green ?
Nor should we await technical training for enjoyment of
things intellectual. If we bring to books all that we have, we
acquire still more in our mental and spiritual exercise. We
need not refrain because our learning does not permit the full
understanding of an author. Indeed, approaching untaught,
if the handmaid of humility but accompany us, we will be re-
freshed and invigorated. All great men bear riches for the
simple and the poor. Dante is a teacher for scholars, and will
ever remain so. The articles in this issue of THE CATHOLIC
WOBLD unfold how his master mind still holds sway over the
world of letters, but Dante wrote for the people of his own
day in the common tongue for the common people. And this
fact alone proves that he is still, and may ever be, the com-
VOL. ami. 52
818 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
panion, helpful, instructive and engaging of us all. To the
crowd, he belongs : but from the crowd he has been set aside.
This is not the fault of pedants alone, but of the crowd
also, for ofttimes we do not know and will not accept the
things that are to our peace. The purpose of these pages is to
show, in some small way, that while much of the deeper and
higher meaning of Dante may escape us, there is no one who
will not derive from the reading of the Divine Comedy much
more than he will bring to it. Gary's translation, which of all
the English translations embodies most fully the spirit of
Dante, is obtainable at low price in the Everyman's Library,
and includes the excellent notes of that eminent Catholic
authority, Edmund G. Gardner. The book is of convenient
size: the notes, though full, are not lengthy. If one will ap-
proach the reading in spiritual mood, he will soon find it
easy: picturesque: stimulating. As Virgil and Beatrice led
Dante along the way of sin and death, to purgation and to
Paradise, so will Dante guide us through sin and doubt and
penance and hope: through varying moods, failures and ad-
vances that surely mark the earthly pilgrimage of all.
We have all found ourselves in that deep forest where, iii
our own and the world's spiritual alienation from God, sad-
ness "with sleepy dullness weighed our senses down." With
those who pray to be lifted out of sadness into light, Dante has
full sympathy, just as he has pity and sorrow for all whom he
finds on his journey to be irretrievably lost. Dante never con-
demns out of personal spite. Those whom his imagination
found in hell, may be taken rather as a type of the sin for
which he finds them thus condemned.
To no one is the thought of God's eternal law and of the
consequences of its flagrant, continued violation, useless or
unprofitable. Mercy does not exist without justice. Fear is
still the beginning of wisdom. In our day virility yields to
weakening sentiment, and law has lost its dignity because its
sanction has been forgotten or denied. Order is the first law
of earth as well as of heaven, and if men will not observe it,
God will vindicate and restore it. The most merciful of men,
the God-Man Jesus Christ, revealed the eternity of punish-
ment for those who died unrepentant of their sins. St. Paul,
whose characteristic gift was human sympathy, did not hesi-
tate to declare this whole counsel of God. Christianity has
1921.] EVERYBODY'S DANTE 819
not only exalted hope and mercy: it has also deepened the
sense of sin. The Gross exalted makes the lengthened shadow.
For the individual there is no greater purifying influence than
meditation upon the infinite results, as regards himself, which
rest in his own actions. For the world and human society
there is no more saving knowledge than that of the eternal
law of God which moves, as another poet put it, with "deliber-
ate speed, majestic instancy."
To realize again, and perhaps more vividly than ever
before, the rulership of God over ourselves and all things
created : to rehearse the glory or the shame to which we may
turn this inheritance, is to be invigorated unto goodness: as
well as instructed unto fear. The understanding and the path
may be desired by human reason: reason alone can neither
compass the former nor guide safely on the latter. Virgil
might show much to Dante, but Virgil could not conduct him
safely through the evils of life, without supernatural aid.
When self-sufficient reason seeks without God, it will ever
meet defeat: light cannot be light when it denies the Light.
Faith, the intellectual belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ
is man's only guide. The light demands, requires faith in its
source. Reason must have faith in God and, hence, says
Dante:
Full assurance (is found) in that holy faith
Which vanquishes all error.
And here we read of the glory of those who keep the faith
with good works, and of the disaster awaiting those who
deny it in sin. For Dante, faith is the truth upon which is
built the structure of man's whole moral life. Faith with him
is not sentiment nor opinion: it is objective truth, vision,
inspiration. Without it the soul would be blind. Faith is
knowable: its truth is the Visible Christ, apparent to all the
world in His Visible Church. Not through philosophy or
science alone will we reach the eternal city: but through that
faith "which is the entrance to salvation's way."
To deny dogma and yet to admire Dante is as inconsis-
tent as to deny flowers and yet enjoy their perfume and color.
He who denies dogma abandons in confusion both the origin
and destiny of man. A learned writer in the Contemporary
Review has learnedly stated that Dante did not solve the prob-
8 20 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
lem of evil. No, Dante did not solve it, but Dante presents
the only solution of evil that ever was or will be given the
solution which is Christ, the Saviour, God and Man. "He hath
borne our infirmities, and carried our sorrows." 1 Christ in
agony on the Cross is the evil begotten of man : condemned of
God. Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is the evil redeemed
unto life, the glory to which the pardoned sinner may reach.
But he who will not let Christ share the burden of the sin
he has committed and cannot bear, shall be crushed by that
self tragedy which, upon his own calvary, overtakes every
man and can be borne through death unto victory, only when
borne with the power and pardon and love of Christ.
Throughout the Inferno the reader sees pictured dramat-
ically the punishments, according to the evil they have chosen,
meted out to those who died still abiding in their sin. It is the
tragedy of the Cross still casting its sinful shadow on earth.
Many are those who remain indifferent to the possibilties
their life possesses. Apathetic: spineless they are the drones
of the moral world here and hereafter.
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only.
The love of the flesh, of things carnal and pleasurable
surely no one will deny the widespread tyranny of such love
today. Dante's words vibrate with modernity. This world,
as well as the next, knows the Hell of which he speaks. In-
deed, it can hardly be questioned that each, in some moment
of experience, tastes the Hell he hopes to escape.
. . . O blind lust!
O foolish wrath ! who so dost goad us on
In the brief life, and in the eternal then
Thus miserably overwhelm us. 2
So, too, the reader accompanies Dante in his illustrations
of the disaster and the dismay overwhelming those who give
themselves to gluttony: to avarice: anger: fraud: political
bribery and corruption: forgery: hypocrisy: the denial of the
faith of Christ: scandal: disloyalty and betrayal.
We of earth witness the direful results in our own day of
'Isaias liii. 2 Inferno XII., 46-49. Also V., 38-46.
1921.] EVERYBODY'S DANTE 821
similar crimes and excesses. Yet are we in any proportionate
measure alive to the social evils they work? They have their
fascination for the fallen heart of man and, even when he
stands apart, stir his curiosity and interest. Life, for many,
without at least the story of vice and sin, is dull and unin-
viting. Even Dante, "all fixed to listen" to scandal and re-
crimination, is at once admonished by Virgil, who adds:
"To hear
Such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds."
Dante's journey through Hell yields yet another blessing
to those who read with hope. Surrounded by temptations and
weaknesses, set upon by wild beasts of fear and dread, born
of its very fears, the soul, at times, half yields and touches on
despair. Shall we be able to make the journey through sin
and come to the mount of purgation and thence to the hills
where, at last, we shall see God? Not in human power, which
rises no higher than ourselves, can our strength lie. Another
must gird us if we would mount above ourselves. If we make
our fears, our own unworthiness our guide then we are un-
done. To view naught but our sin would be to yield to it, to
capitulate, to despair of God's mercy. Therefore, must we
turn our eyes from this Gorgon of death:
"Turn thyself round, and keep
Thy countenance hid; for if the Gorgon dire
Be shown, and thou shouldst view it, thy return
Upwards would be for ever lost."
Looking, not to the valley of indecision where is our undoing,
but to the hills whence come our help,
Then we our steps
Toward that territory moved, secure
After the hallow'd words.
The stars of the cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, forti-
tude, temperance, appear in the heavens. From that farthest
gloom of depression and hopelessness, the soul issues forth
under their inspiration. Terror shall disappear and, more
serene, we shall view again the stars set as sure beacons over
the hills we must climb. We, too, shall sing In Exitu Israel,
822 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
even though we know the way to the Promised Land,
with its desert wastes, its hunger and, perhaps, its in-
fidelities is still to be traversed. But in the journey of deliv-
erance the soul will experience its foretaste of the liberty of
eternal glory. Determination was needed to turn from sin,
constant effort is demanded to keep from it and to advance
in virtue. Heaven must send its help: and heaven will not
refuse. She, the great Queen, Mary, "by whom the key did
open to God's love," and holy spirits bearing aid, will come.
They will teach the grateful song of praise to God; in quiet
and in prayer will the soul give its thanks.
Both palms it join'd and raised,
Fixing its stedfast gaze toward the east
As telling God, "I care for nought beside."
And its yearning will make selfish content impossible, urging
ever to fuller and fuller purgation. The journey, therefore, is
no child's play. Hope consoles, it also stimulates. Often-
times in the striving, we say we "can endure no more." Yet
persevering, as our sins and faults are purged
"Then shall thy feet by heartiness of will
Be so o'ercome, they not alone shall feel
No sense of labor, but delight much more
Shall wait them, urged along their upward way."
Our comfort, our strength is that God is our Father; we His
children.
"O Thou Almighty Father! Who dost make
The heavens Thy dwelling, not in bounds confined,
But that, with love intenser, there Thou view'st
Thy primal effluence; hallow'd be Thy name:
Join, each created being, to extol
Thy might; for worthy humblest thanks and praise
Is Thy blest Spirit."
Thus bound in the living God, we are all bound to one
another : we who live here, they who live in the world to come.
All may help one another by prayer:
Well beseems
That we should help them wash away the stains
They carried hence: that so, made pure and light,
They may spring upward to the starry spheres.
1921.] EVERYBODY'S DANTE 823
In following through the Pitrgatorio, the reader is im-
pressed by this great truth that, while all love springs from
Love Divine, our hearts must possess the love of creation e'er
they can bear the Love Increate. In Purgatory all sins are
wiped away: every sin that springs from the seven capital
sources. They are driven out, so to speak, by the soul righting
itself with God but first it must right itself with the creation
of God which its sin has outraged. For example,
"This circuit," said my teacher, "knots the scourge
For envy; and the cords are therefore drawn
By charity's correcting hand."
To the saints the soul makes constant appeal, for they have
perfected themselves and may speak effectively for us who,
by our sins, have added to our own and all nature's imper-
fection. The angel of fraternal love, who descends upon
Purgatory, comes also to us here, urging us to ascend by the
love of one another :
"It is a messenger who comes,
Inviting man's ascent. Such sights ere long
Not grievous, shall impart to thee delight,
As thy perception is by nature wrought
Up to their pitch."
So the love of higher sphere exalts our desire.
For there, by how much more they call it "ours"
So much propriety of each in good
Encreases more, and heightened charity
Wraps that fair cloister in a brighter flame.
Were we to make this truth our own, we would know
less of anger and impatience, far more of fraternal love. We
would realize that the more we love others the more we con-
tribute to our own good not take from it. Thus are we
brought to the right ordering of love. Sloth, laxity and indif-
ference defeat it. Avarice, lust are its perversions false
shadowings of that great love which urges and attracts the
heart of every man.
8 24 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
"All indistinctly apprehend a bliss,
On which the soul may rest; the hearts of all
Yearn after it; and to that wished bourn
All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold,
Or seek it, with a love remiss and lax;
This cornice, after just repenting, lays
Its penal torment on ye. Other good
There is, where man finds not his happiness:
It is not true fruition; not that blest
Essence of every good the branch and root."
Fraternal love is again beautifully illustrated by Dante,
when he depicts the joy of all the souls when one is released
for flight to Paradise, a joy so great it shakes the very mount
of Purgatory.
"Glory!" all shouted (such the sounds mine ear
Gather'd from those, who near me swell'd the sounds)
"Glory in the highest be to God." We stood
Immovably suspended, like to those
The shepherds, who first heard in Bethlehem's field
That song.
Through that appreciation of brotherly love, sin after sin
drops from the soul : its knowledge is expanded : its exaltation
in the Divine purpose is confirmed: it is taken up in a Power
beyond self, yet where self is not lost. The Second Command-
ment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is like unto
the First "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole
heart."
The power of procreation, so often perverted by lust, is
realized as God's sacred trust to the individual for the sake of
His holy purposes in the race. The cure for lust is the love
of chastity. Thus the soul mounts until, nearing the last
ascent, it hears
A voice whose lively clearness far
Surpassed our human, "Blessed are the pure
In heart," he sang.
Backward it looks, and from the height now realizes, as never
before, the perfidy of its sin, the depth to which it had fallen.
The grace of God is man's sole strength. Its scourge has
blotted out even the memory of its sins.
1921.] EVERYBODY'S DANTE 825
"I not remember," I replied, "that e'er
I was estranged from thee: nor of such fault
Doth conscience chide me."
Again and again the wonderful Saviour, through His
sacrament of penance, lifts the burden of our sins and
We returned
From the most holy wave, regenerate
E'en as new plants renew'd with foliage new,
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars.
Dante chooses St. Lawrence as an example of one who,
through fearful suffering, fixed and kept His will, "that per-
fect will which once upon the bars held Lawrence firm."
Along the river that bears the saint's name, the high hills
rise quickly, one upon another. One who journeys through
them to the great water beyond, views, for mile after mile,
nothing but the ascent before him and then again the further
hills beyond. Yet are these rightly called the Laurentian
hills of hope. For they both beget and test that virile virtue.
Little by little, they lift the traveler up. His every effort
promises reward. His fixed will wins victory and, from the
summit, hope yields to realization and the wide river thrills
his vision with its vast golden expanse. Thus shall we mount
through Laurentian hills until at the end our abiding will
shall be blessed with the vision of eternity.
Love has its drastic purifying power. When the God-
Man showed His need of us, He drew us to Himself. And the
reading of Dante's Paradise will surely reveal our power to
extend the Kingdom of God upon earth: our inheritance that
will the more widely proclaim its glory forever. We were not
made for ourselves. No man who so believes can ever know
what true love is. Yet, while we gave ourselves to such a love-
less creed, we were redeemed at a great price by this we
know our puny self can larger be only in that Love Who
owns it.
Whoso takes his cross, and follows Christ,
Will pardon me for that I leave untold
When in the flecker'd dawning he shall spy
The glitterance of Christ.
826 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
In this beauty of Christ, our bodies will share its greatest
guerdon for their chastity :
"Long as the joy of Paradise shall last,
Our love shall shine around that raiment, bright
As fervent; fervent as, in vision, blest;
And that as far, in blessedness, exceeding,
As it hath grace, beyond its virtue, great.
Our shape, regarmented with glorious weeds
Of saintly flesh, must, being thus entire,
Show yet more gracious."
Thoughtfulness and prayer upon these truths will not alone
console, but, used aright, will lead to definite action. Not
everyone that saith: "Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king-
dom of heaven." We must not alone think Christ: we must
live Christ. And there is no act, not even the smallest; no
opportunity, not even the slightest: no field of activity, not
even the seemingly insignificant, that may be excluded from
our life if it is to be a life for and in and with Christ.
The saints are our companions : our helpers : our models.
Militant, Suffering, Triumphant, the Church is one in Christ,
and Christ is the Church. Dante selects saints from every
field of life the teachers and doctors: the contemplatives,
the more active: the lovers of the poor, the simple and the
learned : the old and the young.
St. Peter demands of him faith: St. James, hope; and St.
John, charity charity that embraces earth as well as heaven :
man and the needs of man as well as God.
'Through human wisdom and the authority
Therewith agreeing," heard I answer'd, "keep
The choicest of thy love for God. But say,
If thou yet other cords within thee feel'st,
That draw thee towards Him; so that thou report
How many are the fangs with which this love
Is grappled to thy soul."
And Dante "did not miss to what intent the Eagle of Our
Lord" had pointed this demand and answered:
"All grappling bonds, that knit the heart to God,
Confederate to make fast our charity.
1921.] EVERYBODY'S DANTE 827
The being of the world; and mine own being;
The death which He endured, that I should live;
And that, which all the faithful hope, as I do;
To the foremention'd lively knowledge join'd;
Have from the sea of ill love saved my bark,
And on the coast secured it of the right.
As for the leaves, that in the garden bloom,
My love for them is great, as is the good
Dealt by the eternal hand, that tends them all."
God's will is Infinite Love acting and reigning through all
creation.
"The eternal Might, which, broken and dispersed
Over such countless mirrors, yet remains
Whole in itself and one, as at the first."
"God seeth all and in Him is thy sight,"
Said I, "blest Spirit. Therefore, will of His
Cannot to thee be dark."
Nor can it be dark to us. We see the light of heavenly faith.
We have here no abiding city: heaven is our home, and the
home of all we love. There, by the mercy of God, all
earth's problems will be solved and our hearts filled with a
love of which tongue hath not told nor hath it entered into the
heart of man to conceive. A creature, one simply of our own
humanity, is there now in body, as well as soul the Queen of
Angels and of Saints the warrant of our hope. Unnumbered
angels and saints attend her.
"O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son!
Created beings all in lowliness
Surpassing, as in height above them all;
Term by the eternal counsel pre-ordain'd;
Ennobler of thy nature, so advanced
In thee, that its great Maker did not scorn,
To make Himself His own creation;
For in thy womb rekindling shone the love
Reveal'd, whose genial influence makes now
This flower to germin in eternal peace:
Here thou to us, of charily and love,
Art, as the noonday torch; and art, beneath.
828 EVERYBODY'S DANTE [Sept.,
To mortal men, of hope a living spring.
So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,
That he, who grace desireth, and comes not
To thee for aidance, fain would have desire
Fly without wings. Not only him, who asks,
Thy bounty succors; but doth freely oft
Forerun the asking. Whatsoe'er may be
Of excellence in creature, pity mild,
Relenting mercy, large munificence,
Are all combined in thee."
Yet this is but the reflected glory of Him Who is the Begin-
ning and the End :
O Eternal Light!
Sole in Thyself that dwell'st; and of Thyself
Sole understood, past, present, or to come;
Thou smiledst, on that circling, which in Thee
Seem'd as reflected splendor, while I mused;
For I therein, methought, in its own hue
Beheld our image painted.
Dante has today a message for everyone. It is a message
rich with human wisdom and heavenly worth. Everybody
may go to the reading of the Divine Comedy at any time, in
any mood, and gain refreshment, light and peace. And at the
end of each reading catch something of the heavenly chorus:
Then "Glory to the Father, to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit," rang aloud
Throughout all Paradise; that with the song
My spirit reel'd, so passing sweet the strain.
And what I saw was equal ecstasy:
One universal smile it seem'd of all things;
Joy past compare; gladness unutterable;
Imperishable life of peace and love;
Exhaustless riches, and unmeasured bliss.
DANTE AND MYSTICISM.
BY E. INGRAM WATKIN.
VERY poet is a mystic. Not every verse maker,
even if a verse maker of genius. We hardly ex-
pect mysticism in the verse of Pope or Voltaire.
But is it poetry? For poetry, like its sister arts,
embodies an intuition of Spiritual or Ideal real-
ity, existing in and through the forms of sense, and bestowing
upon them their truth, their value, their being. Implicit, at
least, in this intuition of spirit immanent in sensible phe-
nomena, is an intuition of the Absolute Spirit, of Whose truth
all ideas are aspects, from Whose goodness all values derive
their worth, from Whose being all creatures exist. And in-
tuition of the absolute Godhead is mystical experience, its ex-
pression a mystical document. But there are different types
of mysticism. There is the mysticism which does not surpass
the natural order, an indirect and obscure intuition of God, as
immanent in His creation, that does not rise to His transcend-
ent being above and beyond His creatures. Much poetry is
confined to this lower immanent mysticism. Such isj the
mysticism of Keats. Another, in some respects a higher, form
of this nature mysticism, is the polytheistic mysticism of Blake,
whose end is union with natural forces manifested supremely
in art. This mysticism is the experimental aspect of Eucken's
universal religion, the religion that attains only the unity of
a spirit life apprehended as penetrating, but not as transcend-
ing, the natural universe.
But, as there is a characteristic religion which escapes
the limitations of nature and creatures by its apprehension of
a world-transcendent Spirit, there is correspondingly a higher
and supernatural mysticism which is the experience of tran-
scendent Godhead. And this mysticism also has its poets.
There are, indeed, poets who pass unconsciously from one
mysticism to the other or present both in unreconciled con-
flict. Shelley, as the disciple of the humanist, Godwin, rises
no higher in conscious intellectual theory than a pantheism
whose supreme value is man. Hence, derives that humanist
830 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
apocalypse, Prometheus Unbound. A kingdom of spiritual
values fulfilled and triumphant is expected from the conver-
sion of man through his own rational enlightenment and good
will. But throughout this very poem is heard the voice of the
higher mysticism which finds the truth and value of life in a
transcendent God, the Demogorgan who releases and en-
thrones Prometheus. For Shelley is also a disciple of Plato.
And Plato looked beyond the realm of natural phenomena to a
divine kingdom of ideas present in the mind of God. The
immanent humanism of Godwin and the transcendent mysti-
cism of Plato are the two philosophies that dominate Shelley's
poetry. They are unreconciled to the end. But the latter, as
the truer and the deeper understanding, gains upon the
former. In his "Hellas," the poet abandons the phenomenal
world to a cyclic interchange of good and evil, and looks for
comfort above it to the unchanging Idea.
Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of War
Based on the chrystaline sea
Of thought and its Eternity.
But no human thought is eternal. Eternity is the divine Word.
Dante is the poet of the higher and supernatural mysti-
cism. His Commedia depicts the ascent of the soul above the
passing things of time and change : "The false images of good
which pay no promise in full" to the Absolute Worth, "the
essential Goodness, of every good thing the fruit and the root."
The Platonism that in Shelley struggles against naturalism and
its Pantheism which equals all values, reigns in the Commedia
with the diadem and unction of divine revelation. From the
dim and tangled forest of a natural life disordered and dis-
tracted by opposition to the supernatural world ensouled by
the divine Life, the poet is raised by divine grace to immediate
and unveiled vision of the Godhead with its integration and
fulfillment of human life in the divine Life and Will. Dante
is the poet of the Catholic religion. The Catholic religion is
the revelation and dispensation of supernatural grace uniting
human souls with God, above their natural life of time and
death. But this union when manifest in conscious experience
is the mystical union and intuition. The singer of Catholic
religion must, therefore, hymn the supernatural mysticism of
its Saints.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 831
It does not, however, follow of necessity that Dante is
himself a supernatural mystic. Conceivably, he might derive
his poetry from the lower experience of implicit nature mysti-
cism, and describe the higher mysticism from without on the
authority of Catholic belief and the recorded experiences of
mystical writers. It would, indeed, be almost inconceivable
that he should not possess at least that inchoate mysti-
cism which consists in the supernatural union with God
through sanctifying grace and charity. But did that grace-
union rise to the conscious experience of its divine Object
present in the central depths of the soul in which mystical
experience consists? The materials for an answer are scanty.
Of the poet's external life we know little, of his interior
life directly almost nothing. He has left no spiritual auto-
biography or memoranda. We are almost entirely dependent
on the indirect method of inference from his imagined journey
in the next world to his real spiritual journey in this life.
Obviously, such inference allows enormous scope to the per-
sonal factor of the student. Who dare discriminate with any
certainty between the elements in the Commedia taken from
external theology and those based on personal experience?
Even the most apparently immediate experiences of a mystic
who professes to describe his personal experience are neces-
sarily molded, at least in their formal expressions, by his
environment and education with their externally accepted
theology and culture. His very vocabulary has been shaped
by ideas independent and pre-existent of his experience. With
a conscious artist like Dante, the subconscious mind was, no
doubt, far less likely to frame an artistic embodiment of spir-
itual intuition without the interference of the conscious intel-
ligence. The elaborate pageant seen in the earthly Paradise
is preceded by an appeal to the Muses to enable the poet "to
put into verse, things hard to conceive." This indicated con-
scious artistic construction.
But there is a mystical experience without images, and
transcendent even of concepts, a contact with the incompre-
hensible, because infinite, Godhead present in the depths of
the soul. The fountain-head of Catholic mystical theology,
the Christian Neo-Platonist who wrote under the pseudonym
of Dionysius, the Areopagite, and whose works had been care-
fully studied by Dante, to whom they came with the authority
832 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
of St. Paul's Athenian convert, 1 devoted a treatise to this
"Negative" intuition of God. 2
As the systematic study of mystical experience developed
a special branch of theology, this formless and direct intui-
tion-union was increasingly valued in contrast to intuitions
mediated through concepts and images. The classical expo-
nent of this mysticism is St. John of the Cross, relentless in his
rejection of imaginary and even of conceptual visions. But
we find the same attitude in the anonymous fourteenth cen-
tury treatise, the Cloud of Unknowing. For it is a feature
of the German School of mystics who derive from Eckhart,
the great Dominican mystic of the later thirteenth century.
Previously, however, prseternormal experiences veiled in
image and concept had been more highly prized with the
natural result that the attainment of the direct and pure in-
tuition was hindered. This may account for the surprising
fact that many of the earlier mystics, St. Augustine, for in-
stance, and later, St. Bernard, speak as if this transcendent
contemplation were an experience of the rarest occurrence
and apparently reached only towards the goal of the mystical
way, whereas later mystical writers regard it, at least in its
weakest form, as the normal experience of all souls called to
mystical prayer.
This would indicate that the comparative freedom of later
mystics from attachment to images and concepts, enabled their
grace-union with God to become manifest as a pure intuition
of His incomprehensible Presence at a far earlier stage than
was possible to their predecessors with their higher valuation
of sensible visions and conceptual contemplations. Dante,
however, is attached to the older mystical tradition. No con-
tact can be established between his work and the contemporary
School of Eckhart. Therefore, the direct formless intuition, if
it occurred at all, would be likely to occur very rarely, and to
be regarded rather as the supreme form of Divine union pos-
sible in this life, than as a comparatively low degree of
mystical experience, as indeed, in its beginning, the lowest
form of experience in the strictest sense mystical (the Prayer
1 Paradise X., XXIX.
*Cf. Mystical Theology I. Translated by Rolt. It must, however, be admitted
that whereas Dante's acquaintance with the Celestial Hierarchy and the Divine
Names is indubitable, there is no evidence of direct knowledge of the Mystical
Theology. But its substance, at least, will have reached him through later
theologians.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 833
of Quiet). Even if Dante did experience this mystical prayer-
union, it would not be described directly in his poem. For
poetry is the incarnation of spiritual truth in sensible imagery.
Its presence could only be inferred indirectly, from what may
be termed the tone and color of the poetical descriptions.
Again, a test fails us. But there is a tone and a color in the
Commedia, a personal emphasis, a fire and an unction which
seem to betray a personal experience behind and beyond the
pictures and the theological expositions. Moreover, the stress
laid on the indescribable character of his experiences in Para-
dise and on his inevitable oblivion of their substantial nature
and worth, points beyond poetic fiction to Dante's attainment
of a mystical contact with God transcending the images and
concepts which can be stored in the memory and commun-
icated to others. This is particularly evident in the opening
lines of the Paradiso, and in the account of the beatific vision
at its close.
But the strongest argument for a personal experience
underlying the imagined experiences of the Commedia, an
experience extending to the immediate formless contact of
mystical prayer, is the claim made by Dante for himself in
the letter to Can Grande, which introduces and dedicates the
Paradiso. It is true that many critics reject this letter as
spurious. If that rejection be well grounded there is no hope
of a certain solution of the question before us. But the de-
tailed defence of its authenticity by so learned a Dantist as
Dr. Moore 3 is eminently convincing. Mr. Edmund Gardner,
in his Dante's Ten Heavens, regards the letter as most prob-
ably genuine, and in practice makes full use of it. This was
before the publication of Dr. Moore's defence. In a later
work, Dante and the Mystics, Mr. Gardner seems to accept it
without hesitation as an authentic source. Referring to him-
self in the third person, Dante, in his letter to Can Grande,
says:
And after saying he was in that place of Paradise he pro-
ceeds to say that he saw things which he who descends
thence cannot relate. And he states the cause of this,
namely, that the intellect sinks so deeply into the object of
its desire, that is into God, that the memory cannot follow.
To understand this, we must know that the human under-
standing in virtue of its connatural relationship with djs-
'Stiidiex in Da^e, thirtj series-
i. 53
834 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
embodied intellectual substance is raised so high that mem-
ory fails on its return, because it has transcended the
human mode [of knowledge].
Dante then appeals to experiences recorded in Scripture, and
continues :
If these instances are insufficient for my critics, let them
read Richard of Saint Victor's book, De Contemplatione,
Bernard's De Consideratione, also Augustine in his De
Quantitate Animx, and they will criticize no longer. But if
they object to the claim of so lofty an elevation for a sin-
ner, let them read Daniel where they will find that even
Nabuchodonosor saw some divine visions against sinners.
. . . For He Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and
the evil, and raineth on the just and on the unjust, some-
times in mercy to effect conversion, at others, in severity
to inflict punishment, manifests His glory in greater or
lesser degree, as He wills, to those who live never so
wickedly.
This passage is of central importance for the study of Dante's
mysticism. Dante distinctly claims a personal experience of
God exceeding human modes of knowledge, that is, above
images and distinct concepts, and similar in character to the
mystical union as described by mystical theologians. Dante
is evidently not merely a poet of mysticism, but himself a
mystic, a mystic in the higher supernatural sense, as mysticism
is understood, experienced and described by Catholic mystics.
But we can neither know the degree and manner of his expe-
rience, nor isolate it with its content. For every mystical
experience, however transcendent and formless, contains im-
plicitly a metaphysical doctrine of God and the soul.
We have seen that Dante's spiritual intuitions are neces-
sarily embodied in imagery or theological formulae derived
from external sources. The final vision of the Paradiso, in its
ultimate failure of all vision that leaves only the activity of
the will and is remembered only by an abiding sweetness in
the heart, resembles most the description of mystical contem-
plation given by the mystics, and among them by those to
whom Dante has expressly referred.
The Catholic religion is a union of the world with God f
through humanity by the dispensation of supernatural grace
in the God-Man and His Church body. But, as we have seen,
mysticism is the conscious realization of that union, in so far
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 835
as it is possible in this life. Mysticism, therefore, and Catholic
religion are as inseparable as the flower and the plant which
bears it. If mysticism is found outside the pale of the visible
Church, it is because Catholic religion, imperfectly and implic-
itly no doubt, also extends beyond it, the soul of the Church
exceeding its body. Hence, the mysticism of Dante is insepar-
able from his theology and his metaphysic. How much of the
theology of the Divina Commedia is actually the interpreta-
tion and elaboration of mystical experience is and must be
unknown. For the Catholic theology, which is the frame-
work of the poem, is a body whose soul is mystical experience,
and, therefore, would interpret to the poet his private expe-
rience of God. And since Dante was steeped in mystical
authors, as appears from his letter to Can Grande, their teach-
ing also will interpret his experience. We must, therefore, be
satisfied to affirm the existence of a genuine mystical expe-
rience as the stimulus of the Commedia, and, without attempt-
ing an impossible isolation of Dante's mystical doctrine, to
outline his theology, as it unfolds and interprets what is im-
plicit in mystical experience, that is in so far as it describes
or interprets the union between the human soul and God.
This theology may be divided into two parts, the theology
of the Object and the subject of the Divine union, God and
the human creature and the theology or theological psychol-
ogy of the way of union.
Theists who are not mystical are usually anthropomor-
phic. Milton, utterly lacking in supernatural mysticism,
makes of the Deity an old man, and even as a man unattrac-
tive. His poetry, therefore, becomes least poetical when it
enters Heaven. Mystics, on the other hand, whose experience
lacks the interpretation of a sound theology are liable to
Pantheism; if nature mystics, to the cosmic pantheism which
confuses God with the creation in which He is immanent; if
transcendental mystics, to the acosmic pantheism, which
denies all reality to creatures. Dante's presentation of God-
head is quite free from anthropomorphism. Unlike Milton,
he never depicts God in human form, but employs symbols
that are obviously no more than symbols. God is seen as the
central point around which revolve the angelic circles, 4 as a
river of light, 5 finally as three concentric circles of light and
*Paradiso XXIX. * Paradiso XXXI.
836 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
flame. His incomprehensibility, hence his transcendence of
all human understanding and expression, is a recurrent theme.
And this is true not only of His Being, but of the decrees of
his predestination. "Our vision ... of its very nature cannot
be so powerful that its ground [God] should not discern far
beyond that which is visible to us." 6 The Contemplatives
in Saturn repeat the same lesson. With Platonic emphasis,
Dante stresses the Divine Goodness and Unity. God is the
Good of Whose worth all created values are more or less im-
perfect reflections, the One Who renders the manifold of
creation a Universe, the Unit in and from which all multi-
plicity is grounded and derived. 7 God, in His second Person,
the Eternal Word, is the Idea Whose refracted rays are crea-
ture. 8 He is Eternity, outside the flux of time, 9 and He dwells
beyond space. 10 In the unchanging now of the Divine Eternity
all the events of time are present, the future equally with the
past. In a manner comprehensible only to God Himself,
place and time are rooted in His Eternity and Omnipresence. 11
God is "the point to Whom all times are present," "where
every when and where are focussed." 12 Thinkers who have
penetrated the implications of the spiritual life have realized
the need and the existence of an immutable and all-inclusive
Value and Truth outside the flux and the exclusions of time
and space. Mr. Bertrand Russell, who cannot believe the real
existence of this absolute Value and Truth, insists on its spir-
itual necessity, though for him its existence is merely the sub-
jective creation of the human mind, a self -contradictory con-
ception since human knowledge, though able to participate in
absolute truth and goodness, is itself subject to time and
space. Shelley, at once Platonist and naturalist, ends with
the same contradiction. Dante, Platonist and Catholic Chris-
tian, rises to the apprehension, indeed to the personal expe-
rience of the absolute Godhead Whose Unity writes the
manifold of our experience, Whose Truth contains our partial
forms of knowledge, Whose Value is the unity of all our values,
and the satisfaction of all our desires. 18
While Dante escapes anthropomorphism, he is equally
free from the acosmic pantheism which has dominated the
Paradiso XIX.
'Purgatorio XVIL, 135; Paradiso V., 10; XXVI., 31-34; XIIL, 58-81.
8 Paradiso XIII., 52-56. Paradiso XXIX., 16. Paradiso UI. f 67.
"Paradiso XXVII., 106-121. "Paradiso XVH., 18, 37-43; XXIX., 12.
"Paradiso XXII., 63-67.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 837
mysticism of the East and has even affected the formulations
of the radically non-pantheist Neo-Platonists. For Dante ad-
mits degrees of reality. Everything that is, that truly exists,
is a reflection of the Divine Idea, 14 a ray of the Divine glory
to which the will of God has given subsistence." 15 Compared
with the existence of God, creatures are non-existent, but this
non-existence is merely comparative. The relation between
God and creatures is often pictured by Dante as that between
light and its reflection. But we must not press the image, for
though reflected light is light, the reflection of God is not God.
If, however, we think of a reflection as a participation of
light by its absence, darkness, we may better seize his meaning.
Among creatures there are degrees of reality correspond-
ing to the degrees of their participation of God. Spirits tran-
scending time and space, possess more of God, and, therefore,
more being than material objects. God created time together
with the beings it measures "in His Eternity outside time,"
a conception first elaborated by St. Augustine. His motive was
no gain for Himself, but that His reflected glory might exist
outside Himself. The Divine glory is thus the end of creation
and that glory consists in the due order of creation. Every
creature, consciously or unconsciously, instinctively or ra-
tionally, fulfills its nature by becoming as godlike, as within
the limits of its nature it may become. 16
But matter from the limitation of its being is an imper-
fect receptacle of the Divine idea which is its form and ful-
fillment. 17 Moreover, as in the philosophy of Plotinus, each
degree of being is, in a sense, the matter whose form is the
superior degree, and it may, by its imperfection, resist the full
reception of that form. Below humanity this defect is neces-
sary, and, therefore, only a physical evil arising from the
essential limitation of created being. When, however, with
humanity reason appears, it brings with it free will. There-
fore, if man's animal nature resists reason, or his natural will
resists supernatural love there is moral evil or sin. So the
first man falls. There is, therefore, a real connection, an
analogy founded in the nature of things between sin and
physical evil. This Dante points out in the first canto of the
Paradiso. 11 But the evil consists only in the breach of order,
" Paradiso XIII., 52, 53. Paradiso XXIX., 15. Paradiso I., 103 to end.
" Paradiso XIII., 76-79. 18 Paradiso I., 127-135.
838 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
which prefers the lower and less real value to the higher, or
in the case of man to the absolute Worth and Reality. There
is nothing evil in the lower goods themselves. Dante's mysti-
cism demands not the rejection of the inferior kinds of being,
but their entire subordination to God, Who alone gives them
what value they possess. The right ordering of loves, in sub-
ordination to the love of God, is the theme of the seventeenth
and eighteenth cantos of the Purgatorio. But the lower loves
and interests are not suppressed. The entire universe is radiant
with Divine light. The forms of nature are vehicles and sym-
bols of Divine truth, secular culture a stepping stone to Divine
wisdom, profane history a revelation of Divine providence,
the State the servant of the Kingdom of God.
For the mediaeval mystics, particularly, perhaps, for the
Victorines, understanding, the exercise of human reason, is
the first stage of the road to Divine knowledge. Dante's rever-
ence for reason and its search for truth appears on every page.
To be sure he insists on its limitations, its need of supplement
by Christian faith. 19 But it is the indispensable presupposi-
tion and support of faith. The natural thirst of our reason for
truth renders us dissatisfied until God has revealed His Abso-
lute Truth, 20 that thirst "never satisfied save with the water
whereof the Samaritan woman asked the grace:" 21 "the en-
during thirst for the deiform kingdom created with our life." 22
Even Max Nordau, who attacks mysticism as the enemy of and
substitute of reason dare not accuse Dante of hostility to
reason. He prefers to claim that he was no mystic!
In itself Dante despises this world with its goods, "the
threshing floor which makes men so fierce." But that same
world and its affairs are from another point of view of eternal
value. For this little world is a threshing floor where an
eternal separation is effected between good and evil souls,
a garden where grows the fruit garnered in heaven. Above
all, it is the world where God became man, the world of the
Incarnation.
Catholic mysticism turns around two poles. One is the in-
comprehensible and infinite Godhead, the other, the humanity
of the God-Man Jesus Christ. Not only is the Divine Idea, the
Eternal Logos, mirrored in the human mind and reflected even
in the material body. It has assumed that mind and body
"Purgatorio III., 34-45; Paradise XIX., 40-64.
20 Paradiso IV., 124-133. Purgatorio XXI., 1-4. Paradise II., 19, 20.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 839
into personal union with Itself. And because the soul and
body of the Word incarnate are one in natural solidarity with
human nature as a whole, and through humanity with the
material environment of humanity, humanity and its environ-
ment are raised thereby to supernatural union with the God-
head as the mystical body and clothing of the God-Man. Thus,
through grace, nature returns to its Divine Source after a
higher and closer fashion than by the mere fulfillment of its
natural work and order. Nature is not only the symbol, but
in a very real sense the sacrament of super-nature. The least
natural creature, the most insignificant action of natural life,
can become a channel of Divine grace, a means to the Divine
union. Human love, the flower of natural life, is the sacra-
ment of Divine charity. Angry, indeed, would Dante be with
critics who argue that because Beatrice is the symbol of
Divine faith she cannot have been an actual woman. It is
precisely because she was a woman of flesh and blood, that
she can reflect and symbolize a higher manifestation of God.
It is this Church Bride of Christ, the dispensation of grace
received in nature, wedding it with God in a supernatural
Divine Kingdom that Beatrice, in her widest significance, repre-
sents. Since Dante is throughout concerned with a vision of
Divine truth, the theoretical aspect of the grace life is pre-
dominant in his intention. Primarily, therefore, Beatrice is
faith, the cognitive aspect of the life of grace, as rational
understanding (Virgil) is the cognitive aspect of natural
human life. But we must not forget her wider meaning
which includes the entire economy of grace, the supreme re-
ception and reflection of God in creation. Therefore, it is that
her beauty increases at every stage of the celestial ascent.
The subject of the Diuina Commedia is not primarily
the way of Divine Union in this life. But since the condition
of a soul in the next world is evidently the continuation and
the consequence of its final condition in this, and since there is
but one principle and one way of union with God, however
diverse its exterior forms, we are justified in drawing from
Dante's account of his ascent to God through Purgatory and
Paradise a description of the soul's mystical ascent to Divine
Union in this life. Only we must bear in mind that the
primary purpose of the poem, the picture of souls in the here-
after, must inevitably modify and obscure this secondary
840 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
meaning. We must also remember that Dante is concerned
not so much with the condition and progress of the individual,
as with the spiritual condition of mankind as a whole, with
the progress or failure of humanity in relation to its universal
end of supernatural union with God and reception of His God-
head as the body of His Word and the temple of His Spirit.
Hence, for example, the spheres of Paradise are not primarily
stages of spiritual ascent, but final manifestations of God in
various human groups, manifestations more or less glorious
according to the special vocation of each group.
The ascent of the soul is its attainment of freedom, 23 its
emancipation from the limitations of creatures by union with
the unlimited Being of God. But this escape can only be
effected by voluntary death to the limited desires that im-
prison the soul within earthly goods. The soul must wash
away the stains of despairing thoughts (the stains of hell)
with the dew of heavenly grace, and gird itself for the ascent
with the smooth rush of a humility that yields to every wave
of Divine vocation and inspiration. 24 In Dante's time,
the threefold division of the mystical way into the Purgative,
the Illuminative and the Unitive was already classical. 25 The
Purgative way is represented by the mount of Purgatory.
In this way natural reason (Virgil) can still guide, for reason
can discover the moral evil of sinful dispositions. But reason
cannot lead unaided; it requires the illumination of grace.
When human guidance fails, the sun shows the path which
always turns to the right. When the sun sets, power to ascend
fails automatically. At night the only possible motion is
downward or in a circle at the same altitude. For the sun,
Plato's child and image of the Good, is for Dante Divine grace
without which no supernatural progress is possible. In the
Paradiso when sanctifying grace has become the light of glory,
the sun is superseded by "the light that renders the Creator
visible to the creature." The theology of grace, as elaborated
by St. Augustine in his controversy with the Pelagians, is
summed up in Dante's picture of the failure of ascent at sunset.
In the Purgative way when the dawn of conscious mystical
experience is not yet risen, an anticipatory illumination
reaches the soul through inspirations given in a prayer ab-
stracted from earthly thoughts. These are the inspirations to
n Pnrgatorio L, 71-74; XXVHI., 132-140; Paradiso XXXI., 79.
* Purgatorio I. Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, p. 90.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 841
which Father Baker in his Holy Wisdom ascribes the best
advancement of the contemplative beginner. During one of
these dreams the poet is carried up to the gate of Purgatory.
The soul attains that definitive conversion, often reached in a
moment of unwonted illumination, when the way of purifica-
tion is entered in full earnest and deliberate affection for
sin abandoned. Hence, the poet once admitted is forbidden
to look behind him. 26
Seven radical perversions of love, seven manifestations of
the natural life rebelling as self-love against charity are the
seven capital vices whose purgation is effected on the seven
terraces of Purgatory. Deepest rooted is the self-affirmation
of the individual who finds his end in himself and his own
glory, the sin of pride. This separation and self-affirmation
of the utterly dependent individual from and against the
Whole, God with the universe united to Himself, is the ground
of sin. It was the first sin of the fallen angels. Pride, there-
fore, must be purged first of all by humble reception of the
Divine Will. The supreme example of this humility is Mary's
self-abandoning consent to the Incarnation, pictured in the
pavement of this cornice. And the paraphrase of the Lord's
Prayer which forms the devotion of the proud soul, centres on
an absolute abandonment to God's will and utter need of His
help. Here, as throughout Purgatory, the purifying penalty is
the consequence of the sinful disposition to be purged. The
soul that raised itself against its Source, is, in consequence,
bowed beneath the weight of that very selfhood in which it
gloried, and the soul that sought to display itself in a false
light to the praise of others, is almost unrecognizable in the
world of truth. 27
After pride must be purged envy in which the self-
affirmation of the individual has become a positive hostility to
others, a vice more hateful in its outer manifestations, but,
because it is more external, easier to detect and eradicate, and
therefore less difficult an obstacle to spiritual advance. The
purging prayer is the Litany of the Saints, an appeal to that
solidarity of souls in God from which envy had severed the
envious, the pain, the sewing up of their eyes from the sun-
light. After envious hate is purged the still more external
vice of anger, whose smoke also blinds the eyes to the sun, but
28 Purflratorio IX., 130-133. Purgatorio X., 112-117. ^
VOL. CXIII. 54
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842 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
not so inwardly as the tightly sewn wire thread of the envious.
Here the soul (Dante) must keep close to reason (Virgil).
The devotion of the angry souls is a meditation on the meek
Lamb of God. During the night Dante fittingly waits on the
cornice where spiritual sloth is purified. The punishment
here is a ceaseless race around the cornice. For the spirit-
ually slothful are often active in worldly affairs, though they
make no supernatural progress. To this cornice alone no
devotion is assigned. Spiritual sloth is neglect of prayer.
On the following day Dante passes through the purgation
of misdirected forms of positive love extending indeed beyond
the self and therefore less limited, but terminating in creatures
of this natural life. Lowest of these is avarice, whose end
is worldly possessions, accompanied by the prodigality that
exchanges these possessions for immediate pleasures. Its
consequence and penalty is prostration to the earth preferred
before heaven, its devotion, the remorseful confession of this
spiritual bondage. Of all positive self-transcending loves,
avarice is the most limiting and the most exclusive of spiritual
life. Hence its penalty is lowest and obviously the most hate-
ful to Dante. After the purgation of avarice, the reason is in
a state of habitual illumination by grace. Statius joins Virgil
in the conduct of Dante. In gluttony the necessity of indi-
vidual bodily sustenance is allowed to hinder the spiritual life.
Less interior and, therefore, less binding in its effect than the
previous vices, it is particularly degrading to human dignity.
Its punishment therefore disfigures and renders unrecogniz-
able the countenance which should reflect the spiritual activity
and dignity of man. In so far as gluttony makes the soul
desire excessively the lower food of the body, it prevents it
from seeking its own Food. But the former can never satisfy,
and the soul is thus left to pine in hunger and thirst. This
is the penalty of this cornice. The last vice to be purged is
sexual impurity in all its forms. Sexual love is the flower of
the natural life, the most powerful manifestation of the elan
vital, as it issues in the maintenance of the race, the supreme
energy of libido, as Jung terms it, or concupiscence to employ
Augustinian terminology. Since, however, the supernatural
life does not destroy but fulfills the life of nature, the supreme
manifestation of the former is preeminently matter to be in-
formed by the latter.
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM
Concupiscence in its most powerful urge is fittest for what
the psycho-analyst would term sublimation, the Catholic calk
it sanctification, into the charity that unites not with the nat-
ural life of humanity, but with the life of God in supernatural-
ized humanity. Hence marriage is sacramental of the grace-
union between God and the Church. Dante's human love for
Beatrice is sublimated in his love of God in the Church and
her faith. Since human love is the best material of charity,
and the lover most apt to be formed into a saint, souls guilty
of abuse of sexual love are purified nearest to the earthly
Paradise. Their punishment is to burn in the flames of un-
satisfied love. For lust withdraws love from the charity which
fulfills love. Dante himself must pass through this fire, as
must every soul from Purgatory, even if unstained by im-
purity. For the soul could not have sinned except by follow-
ing in some form the natural life-love in resistance to charity.
The earthly Paradise is the entrance of the Illuminative
way. Here human reason (Virgil) vanishes before Divine
Faith (Beatrice). As St. John of the Cross will insist, faith,
described by St. Bernard as a veiled knowledge of the Divine
truth which exceeds reason, is now the soul's guide to blind
reception of the Divine self-revelation beyond human under-
standing. "Faith," St. Thomas defines, "is a habit of the
mind whereby Eternal life begins in us, making the intellect
assent to the things whose truth is not manifest to it." But
before Virgil vanishes from Beatrice's presence, Matilda ap-
pears to guide Dante to Beatrice and to wait upon her. Her
relationship to Virgil is that of St. Bernard to Beatrice.
The celestial pageant which surrounds Beatrice in her com-
ing, bears to the Illuminative way the same relation that the
pageant of the Saints in the Stellar Heaven bears to the Unitive.
Both are revelations of God as incarnate in Christ and His
Church body. But in the former that revelation is veiled by
its incarnation. Mother Cecilia, a Spanish Carmelite mystic,
explains that the mysteries of Christ to be the channel of mys-
tical union must be used in a Divine way, in which the soul
does not rest in the contemplation of the humanity, but pene-
trates through it to the Godhead. This higher Divine way i*
symbolized by the apparition in the Stellar Heaven. The pag-
eant of the earthly Paradise is a lower more human way in
which the soul rests in the humanity and its mysteries with
8 44 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
their extension in the visible Church, Beatrice's chariot, as
opposed to that invisible Church spirit seen among the stars.
Hence the chariot can be broken and defiled; the heavenly
Church is inviolate. In both visions the three theological vir-
tues, faith, hope, and charity, are prominent. But here they
are clothed in imaginative forms, there, discerned in them-
selves as naked spiritual powers. Moreover, Christian faith
(Beatrice) must first appear to the soul in the garb of mate-
rial symbols and physical events. Scripture reading, the
white clad elders, and the institutional religion of the Church,
the chariot, are here the predominant means of spiritual il-
lumination. And spiritual guide books are accustomed after
the warfare against faults in the Purgative way to place in
the Illuminative the meditation of Gospel mysteries.
The effect of the new illumination is a renewed and
keener realization of the sinfulness of the soul and of the
comparative nothingness of the creatures which have led it
astray. Dante is rebuked by Beatrice, forced to heart-felt
confession, and in the shame of it swoons away. This swoon
is the death to the old life of nature with its sin, in which the
Purgative way is completed. For a death unto sin and the
beginning of a new life unto supernatural justice, a death re-
peated ever more inwardly and more radically with every
advance in the Divine union, with every accession of super-
natural life, is the law of mystical progress. Finally, baptism
in the two rivers of Lethe and Eunoe, the former to wash away
all experimental knowledge of evil, the latter to revivify all
the goodness possessed or exercised by the soul, renders it
"pure and disposed to ascend to the stars," that heavenly realm
of manifest supernatural life which is mystical experience on
earth and a foretaste of the beatific vision hereafter. St.
John of the Cross, in the Spiritual Canticle of the Soul, speaks
of oblivion of sin as an effect of mystical union. But he places
this oblivion towards the end of the mystic way.
Freed from the limits of sinful habit, the soul rises
through the illumination of God, led on by faith which does
not suffer it to rest in any gift of God which is not the Giver
Himself. For "her eyes" are "fixed on the sun beyond our
wont." The accession of light on entering Paradise, "as if He
Who has the power had adorned heaven with another sun,"
is the light of supernatural contemplation superadded to the
1921.] DANTE AND MYSTICISM 845
light of reason. The ascent into Paradise is an unspeakable
deification wherein human nature is in a very real sense ren-
dered Divine by its union with God. The bold language of
deification is employed by mystics, as it was used by many of
the early Fathers. In particular, St. Bernard (de Diligendo
Deo) speaks of the soul at the end of the way of love as deified
by absorption in the love of God. As Glaucus was trans-
formed in the sea to a demi-god, so Dante, the soul, entering
the limitless sea of Godhead, 28 becomes by grace a deified man.
The character of the spheres of Paradise is determined by two
factors, the natural influence ascribed to its star, for the nat-
ural capacity of each soul conditions its reception of super-
nature, and a combination of Dionysius' arrangement of the
angelic hierarchies with St. Bernard's description of their
character and function in the De Consider atione.
But we may also see in the seven lower spheres the seven
gifts of the Holy Spirit which perfect and adorn the soul for
the Divine union. Fear of the Lord would have prevented
the souls in the moon from breaking their vows through fear
of men. On this Holy Fear rests the sanctity of the vow, and
by its aid free will is able to overcome external compulsion.
Moreover, it is the beginning of Divine wisdom (Psalm ex.).
Piety renders human work the filial service of God. The am-
bitious spirits in Mercury are indeed instruments of Divine
Providence, but their merit is diminished, because the motive
of their work was not this piety of Divine service. The doc-
trine of redemption which centred in the pious obedience of
Christ to his Father even unto the death of the Cross and
involved pious submission to the Imperial jurisdiction of
Pilate is here explained. 30 The soul grounded in the fear of
the Lord, now lives and works by filial piety. To Venus the
sphere of lovers it is harder to assign a gift. But the gift of
counsel would have directed their love aright, and the teaching
given in this sphere turns on human counsel as the prudent
ordering of society, and the Divine counsel that utilizes for
its providence natural forces, the Stellar influences. It is not
enough for the soul to love, not even to possess a love of God
in its affections. It needs also counsel to guide its choices.
To the Theologians in the Sun corresponds the gift of
38 We may compare the end of Mother Cecilia's treatise on the Transformation
of the soul in God and the Pacific Ocean of St. Catherine of Siena.
" Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, pp. 128-133. Paradiso VII.
846 DANTE AND MYSTICISM [Sept.,
knowledge. The Knowledge of God acquired by the study of
Revelation is the illumination of this ascent. But that study
must be undertaken in disinterested freedom from earthly
environment, and must be sweetened by the loving contem-
plation of Christ Crucified. Hence, simple friars mingle with
learned doctors, the story of St. Francis is told beside the
story of the theologian, Dominic, and in both lives their
poverty is emphasized. To Mars, obviously, belongs fortitude.
Active struggle against the forces of evil in the soul and in the
world is a higher degree of union than theological study. The
discourse in this sphere terminates with Dante's fortitude
in speaking the truth at all personal cost and risk. Fittingly,
also, does fortitude follow knowledge. For knowledge of
divine truth gives strength to struggle against the falsehood
and unreason of the world, and knowledge without consequent
struggle avails only for condemnation. To Jupiter I would
assign understanding. The incapacity of human understand-
ing to fathom the decrees of divine predestination is here the
theme, and the reward of each just monarch is a special under-
standing of Divine Providence, often in regard to some effect
previously unintelligible. 81 After brave struggle with the ap-
parent irrationality of life and nature the soul receives intui-
tions of the Divine Providence at work behind and in spite
of a seemingly godless world. To Saturn, the sphere of con-
templatives, corresponds the gift of wisdom, the gift to which
theologians ascribe mystical intuition. 32 It is primarily a con-
tact of the will exceeding its concomitant intuition. Dante,
therefore, receives little teaching in this sphere. His question
is declared unanswerable, his request deferred. But the lad-
der is seen up which souls mount to the highest Heaven. This
ladder is the mystical way of union already mounted far,
but now clearly seen reaching upward till it is lost in the
Divine Darkness.
To the empyrean Heaven of "Intellectual light full of love,"
the light of glory which renders possible the vision of God,
corresponds the union of the soul with God in Himself, in
communion, however, with the saints and the angels. En-
trance into this sphere blinds Dante a second time. The divine
light dazzles the soul into the temporary darkness of another
Paradtso XX., 37-73. Note the repetition of "Ora Cognosce," "Now he knows,"
but with the sense of "understands."
" See, for instance, Anthony of the Holy Ghost, Directorium Mysticum.
1921.J DANTE AND MYSTICISM 847
night. Further grace, the continued operation of the blinding
light must strengthen its faculties for the final vision. The
prefatory vision of the river of Light wherein plunge the
angelic sparks and on whose banks the saints blossom, as
flowers, may represent the vision of creatures immanent in
God, a vision higher than the vision of God immanent in crea-
tures. Beatrice is now replaced as guide by St. Bernard, the
type of infused contemplation, the mystical intuition in which
faith issues and is made perfect. Through the intercession of
Mary, flower and type of a creation reunited to God and re-
ceptive of His Self-donation, the temple of Divine Incarnation,
St. Bernard leads Dante to the beatific vision of the Triune
Godhead. This vision which, theologians argue, had perhaps
been granted after a transient fashion to a Paul or an Elias,
represents the highest mystical intuition-union possible on
earth. What its exact degree is we cannot tell. Distinctions
later elaborated: the Prayer of Quiet, Full Union, Ecstasy,
Spiritual Espousals, Spiritual Marriage, were unknown to
Dante. But its conclusion, like the supreme act of the Spiritual
Marriage for Mother Cecilia, and St. John of the Cross, and
like the highest insight into God granted to Angela of Foligno,
was an absorb tion of the understanding in the Divine Dark-
ness of God's infinite Being above and beyond all human con-
cepts and description, a Darkness, however, that left the will
moved incomprehensibly by its divine Object, "the Love that
moves the Sun and the other stars." For Dante, as for other
mystics, however far they outstripped him on the road of
Divine Union, "The rest is Silence." It is the silence that
reigns on the summit of St. John's mystic Carmel, the half
hour's silence in Heaven, the silence that is God's praise in
Zion. 33 It is the silence of an experience beyond speech and
thought. But love moves onward still to the Divine Centre of
all loves, until death shall remove the last thin veil that hides
the Divine Glory, 3 * till the dark intuition brightens into clear
vision, and "we shall be like unto" God, because "we shall see
Him as He is."
"Old version of Psalm LXV., 1.
14 St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love. I.
THE TIMES OF DANTE.
BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS.
ERHAPS no more completely erroneous critical
dictum has ever been expressed than the asser-
tion of Carlyle, that "in Dante ten silent cen-
turies found a voice." On the contrary, as the
labors of thousands of scholars and critics con-
tinue to add to the already vast literature of research and
criticism of Dante and his work, it becomes ever more appar-
ent that "the central man of all the world" was, nevertheless,
the typical man of genius of a particular epoch. If the Divine
Comedy, according to Dean Church, is one of the landmarks
of universal history, Dante and his work constitute as well a
landmark of the history of the thirteenth century. The coin-
cidence of the present world-wide interest in the supreme poet
of Christianity with possibly even a greater interest in and
study of the history, and the social ideas and customs, of his
age, is a circumstance containing matter for the deepest, most
earnest, and most hopeful study. Frederick Harrison in his
Survey of the Thirteenth Century says: "Of all the epochs of
effort after a new life that ... is the most spiritual, the most
really constructive and, indeed, the most truly philosophic.
It had great thinkers, great rulers, great teachers, great poets,
great artists, great moralists, and great workmen. It could
not be called the material age, the devotional age, the political
age, or the poetic age in any special degree. It was equally
poetic, political, industrial, artistic, practical, intellectual and
devotional. And these qualities acted on a uniform concep-
tion of life with a real symmetry of purpose." Our own dis-
tracted and inchoate age requires and seeks that same sym-
metry of purpose : the Catholic Faith.
Nor was the thirteenth century a separate and inexpli-
cable efflorescence of individual genius and of social vitality
and creativeness. Even as Dante was no "solitary phenom-
enon of his time, but a worthy culmination of the literary
movement which, beginning shortly before 1200, produced
down to 1300 such a mass of undying literature," so his age
1921.] THE TIMES OF DANTE 849
brought into manifestation in religion, art, philosophy, hand-
icraft, and politics ideas, aspirations, and tendencies that had
been born or preserved in the less illuminated centuries pre-
ceding it. The thirteenth century (as Dr. James J. Walsh has
stated) , "is the century of the Gothic cathedrals, of the founda-
tion of the university, of the signing of Magna Charta, and of
the origin of representative government with something like
constitutional guarantees throughout the west of Europe. The
cathedrals represent a development in the arts that has prob-
ably never been equaled either before or since. The university
was a definite creation of these generations that has lived and
maintained its usefulness practically in the same form in
which it was then cast for the seven centuries ever since. The
foundation stones of modern liberties are to be found in the
documents which for the first time declared the rights of man
during this precious period.
"A little consideration of the men who, at this period,
lived lives of undying influence on mankind, will still further
attract the attention of those who have not usually grouped
these great characters together. Just before the century
opened, three great rulers died at the height of their influence.
They are still, and will always be, the subject of men's
thoughts and of literature. They were Frederick Barbarossa,
Saladin, and Richard Cceur de Lion. They formed but a sug-
gestive prelude of what was to come in the following century,
when such great monarchs as St. Louis of France, St. Ferdi-
nand of Spain, Alfonso the Wise of Castile, Frederick II. of
Germany, Edward I., the English Justinian, Rudolph of Haps-
burg, ... and Robert Bruce, occupied the thrones of Europe.
Was it by chance or Providence that the same century saw the
rise of and the beginning of the fall of that great Eastern mon-
archy which had been created by the genius for conquest of
Jenghiz Khan, the Tartar warrior, who ruled over all the East-
ern world from beyond what are now the western confines of
Russia, Poland, and Hungary, into and including what we
now call China." 1 Of those times immediately preceding
the advent of Dante, Dr. Ralph Adams Cram writes as fol-
lows: "The twelfth was the century of magnificent endeavors
and all that was great in its successor is here in embryo not
only in art, but in philosophy, religion and the conduct of
1 Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries, p. 2.
85 o THE TIMES OF DANTE [Sept.,
life. The eleventh century is a time of aspiration and vision,
of the enunciation of new principles and of the first shock of
the contest between the old that was doomed, and the new that
was destined to unprecedented victories." '
Dante was born at Florence in 1265, shortly before the
decisive battle of Benevento, which placed the Guelf Party in
power in Florence, and marked an epoch in Italian history.
And out of the struggles of Italy in this epoch emerged many
of the influences which moved and molded the subsequent his-
tory of the world, particularly in regard to the democratic
aspirations of the common people struggling for their human
rights against the despotism of capricious tyrants and privi-
leged aristocrats. "Benevento," says Gardner, "ended for the
time the struggle between the Roman Pontiffs and the German
Csesars; it initiated the new strife between the Papacy and the
royal house of France. Henceforth, the old ideal significance
of 'Guelf' and 'Ghibelline,' as denoting adherents of Church
and Empire respectively, becomes lost in the local conflicts of
each Italian province and city. The imperial power was at an
end in Italy; but the Popes, by calling in this new foreign aid,
had prepared the way for the humiliation of Pope Boniface
at Anagni and the corruption of Avignon. The fall of the
silver eagle from Manfredi's helmet before the golden lilies
on Charles' standard may be taken as symbolical. The pre-
ponderance in Italian politics had passed back from Germany
to France; the influence of the house of Capet was substituted
for the overthrown authority of the Emperor. 8 Three weeks
after the battle Charles entered Naples in triumph, King of
Apulia and Sicily; an Angevin dynasty was established upon
the throne of the most potent state of Italy."
This great battle marked the accession of the first of the
fourteen Popes who reigned during Dante's life, from 1265 to
1321. This was Clement IV., the successful conduct of whose
pontificate of three years and nine months left the Papacy in a
much stronger condition than when the keys of Peter were
first placed in his hands. John XXII. was the last of the Popes
who were contemporary with Dante; and his insistent ad-
vancement on all possible occasions of ecclesiastical interests
and of the supreme influence of the Papacy in political mat-
ters, involved him in grievous disputes throughout the greater
1 The Substance of Gothic, p. 69. Purgatorio XX., 43, 44.
1921.] THE TIMES OF DANTE 851
portion of his pontificate, which, too, belongs to the sad history
of the "Babylonian captivity" of the Popes at Avignon. No
less than four of these Popes were elevated to the altars of the
church : Blessed Gregory X., Blessed Innocent V., St. Gelestine
V., and Blessed Benedict XL Many of them were men of the
highest order of ability. Honorius IV. (1285-1287) comes
down to us with the high title of Patron of Learning. John
XXL was famous as a scientist before he mounted the Papal
throne.
Names that are stars in the firmament of the Faith, lights
which still shine for us of the twentieth century, are numerous
among the churchmen of the thirteenth century. St. Dominic
and St. Francis are supremely eminent in that bright list;
among the many other canonized saints of that wonderful
era are St. Edmund of Canterbury, St. Clare of Assisi, St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Louis, King of France, St. Ferdi-
nand, King of Spain, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure.
This great catalogue includes also Albertus Magnus, the
master of St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, a foundation
stone of modern experimental science, Duns Scotus, and
Raymond Lully, Vincent Beauvais, Alexander of Hales,
Robert of Sorbonne, and the founders of some twenty
universities. Artists like Cimabue and Giotto were the pre-
cursors and the masters of the greatest school of painting so
far known; and such giant literary artists as the authors of
the Arthurian Legends and of the Nibelungen, and those
masters of song in many moods, the Meistersingers, the Minne-
singers, and the Troubadours, not merely prepared the way
for Dante and helped to mold the soul of St. Francis and the
Franciscan movement, but have also left a body of prose and
poetry of which any age might be proud. Even Carlyle, whose
dour spirit was so little attuned to the genius of Catholic civi-
lization, and who could so falsely estimate the forces which
found supreme expression in Dante as to lead him to make the
monstrous statement already quoted, has written of the poetry
of the thirteenth century in words that perfectly portray the
lyric atmosphere of that thrilling time:
"We shall suppose that this Literary Period is partially
known to all readers. Let each recall whatever he has learned
or figured regarding it; represent to himself that brave young
heyday of Chivalry and Minstrelsy when a stern Barbarossa,
85 2 THE TIMES OF DANTE [Sept.,
a stern Lion-heart, sang sirventese, and with the hand that
could wield the sword and sceptre twanged the melodious
strings, when knights-errant tilted, and ladies' eyes rained
bright influences; and, suddenly, as at sunrise, the whole earth
had grown vocal and musical. Then truly was the time of
singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires,
the wise and the simple, men, women and children, all sang
and rhymed or delighted in hearing it done. It was a uni-
versal noise of Song; as if the Spring of Manhood had arrived,
and warblings from every spray, not indeed, without infinite
twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music,
were bidding it welcome."
And while the voices of nature and of human love were
finding beautiful expression in thousands of songs, and while
the great human stories that have moved the hearts of men in
all ages were being told by Walter Mapes, or whoever wrote
the stories of the Holy Grail cycle, or the Nibelungen epic,
there resounded, like the harmonious tones of organs from
the cathedrals that everywhere were arising, the deep, solemn
music of the marvelous Latin hymns, the Dies Irse, the Stabat
Mater, the Pange Lingua Gloriosi, and the other triumphant
chants of the Church.
Among the sovereigns contemporary with Dante were
Rudolph of Hapsburg, the founder of the line, the last of
which to reign, Charles, of Austria-Hungary, is today a fugitive
in Switzerland. Rudolph was one of the five emperors whose
stormy fortunes and violent struggles with Popes and other
rulers were part of the mighty drama of human government
in which Dante was so vitally interested, and for part in which
he paid such sad price in his long exile. The others were
Adolph of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, Henry of Luxemburg,
and Louis of Bavaria. Henry VII. it was whom Dante hailed
when crowned at Aix, out of the gloom and depression of his
exile, in his famous letter to the princes and people of Italy,
as the new Moses who would lead the Italian people out of
the darkness of their political misery, and in whom he saw
the realization of the golden dream which he expressed in his
De Monarchia, the dream of the union of Church and Empire
in the supreme figures of Pope and King, ruling all the world
from one centre.
% Five kings ruled France during Dante's lifetime, from the
1921.] THE TIMES OF DANTE 853
immortal St. Louis IX. (1226-1270), to Philip V. (1316-1322);
and the three kings of England during that period were Henry
III., Edward I. and Edward II.; while a host of monarchs came
and went upon the throne of Naples and Sicily and of Aragon.
In the universal sweep of his interest in all things human,
the struggles of dynasties, of emperors and Popes were just
as important to Dante, though hardly more so, as the civic
struggles of the merchants and nobles in his own city of Flor-
ence. The vitality of his pleadings for national unity have
been such, that in our own time they have been quoted by
Italian statesmen to justify their actions in the political
struggles of modern Italy. And through all the medley of
international and civic strife that filled Dante's age, there are
clearly to be discerned the birth pangs of the democratic spirit,
the beginnings of the age-long and still not-ended endeavor of
humanity to achieve just individual and national liberty.
Among the great world events that marked Dante's times
and left their impress upon succeeding ages, the signing of
Magna Charta, the foundation of the liberty of English-speak-
ing peoples, in 1215, was epochal, while the enfranchisement
of the serfs at Bologna, in Italy, in 1256, nine years before
Dante's birth, was another milestone on the path then opening
on which the common people moved forward toward democ-
racy. In 1261, Michael Palseologus, Emperor of Nice, captured
Constantinople and brought to an end the Eastern Empire of
the Latins. The year following Dante's birth, 1266, marked
the admission of the Commons to the Parliament of England.
In 1282 the King of England conquered Wales, and in 1283 the
Teutonic order completed the conquest of Prussia, and laid
deep the foundations of that Prussian militancy which has
wrought such mighty havoc ever since. The year 1291 saw the
taking of Ptolemais and Tyre by the Mamelukes, and the end
of the Crusades, while six years later, in 1300, came the founda-
tion of the modern Turkish Empire by Ottoman I. and the first
Jubilee proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII.
The ending of the Crusades did not, however, bring to an
end the mighty forces for good which, though accompanied by
minor evils, were due to them. In his history of the Middle
Ages, George Washington Green clearly sums up the verdict
which unbiased history has pronounced upon the Crusades :
"Christendom had not spent in vain its treasures and its
S54 THE TIMES OF DANTE [Sept.,
blood in the holy wars. Its immense sacrifices were repaid by
immense results, and the evils which these great expeditions
necessarily brought with them were more than compensated
for by the advantages which they procured for the whole of
Europe.
"The Crusades saved Europe from the Mussulman in-
vasion, and this was their immediate good. Their influence
was felt, too, in a manner less direct, but not less useful. The
Crusades had been preached by a religion of equality in a soci-
ety divided by odious distinctions. All had taken part in them,
the weak as well as the strong, the serf and the baron, man and
woman, and it was by them that the equality of man and
woman, which Christianity taught, was made a social fact. St.
Louis declared that he could do nothing without the consent of
that influence of woman which gave rise to chivalric courtesy,
the first step towards refinement of manners and civilization.
The poor, too, were the adopted children of the Christian chiv-
alry of the Crusades. The celebrated orders of Palestine were
instituted for the protection of poor pilgrims. The Knights of
the hospitals called the poor their masters. Surely no lesson
was more needed by these proud barons of the Middle Ages
than that of charity and humility."
The common inspiration of life in the thirteenth century,
not only for the Crusades, but for all its works and ways, is
found by all students of that period to be the Catholic Faith.
Indeed, it was the golden age of Faith. "Everywhere the
Cross, the symbol of salvation, met the eye. It was the age
when men lived in one faith, used one ritual, professed one
creed, accepted a common doctrine and moral standard, and
breathed a common religious atmosphere. Heresy was not
wholly absent, but it was the exception. Religion, regarded
then not as an accident or an incident of life, but as a benign
influence permeating the whole social fabric, not only cared
for the widow and orphan and provided for the poor, but it
shaped men's thoughts, quickened their sentiments, inspired
their work, and directed their wills. These men believed in a
world beyond the grave as an ever-present reality. Hell,
Purgatory, Heaven were so near to them that they, so to speak,
could touch the invisible world with their hands. To them, as
to Dante, 'this life was but a shadowy appearance through
which the eternal realities of another world were constantly be-
1921.] THE TIMES OF DANTE 855
traying themselves.' Of the intensity and universality of faith
in that life beyond death, Dante is not the exception, but the
embodiment. As the voice of his age he begins with faith, con-
tinues with faith, and leads us to the unveiled vision of God." *
The faith of the age shines forth in the great names and
mighty works of the saints, the philosophers, the theologians,
and hardly less evident is the spirit of Faith of the masses of
the people. Again to quote Dr. Ralph Adams Cram :
"It is hard for us to think back into such an alien spirit
and time as this, and so understand how with one-tenth of its
present population England could support so vast and varied
a religious establishment, used as we are to an age where reli-
gion is only a detail for many and for most a negligible factor.
We are only too familiar with the community that could barely
support one parish church, boasting its one-half dozen reli-
gious organizations, all together claiming the adherence of
only a minority of the population, but in the Middle Ages, reli-
gion was not only the most important and pervasive thing, it
was a moral obligation on every man, woman and child, and
rejection or even indifference was unthinkable. If once we
grasp this fact," continues Cram, "we can understand how in
the eleventh century, the whole world should cover itself with
'its white robe of churches.' '
But it was not simply in the building of the cathedrals
and churches and civic buildings that faith clothed itself in
the imperishable beauty of great architecture, which arose
for the most part, and as it were spontaneously, out of the
common genius of the people; that same faith was the prin-
ciple of the beauty which was wrought by the craftsmen and
humble workers of the period into all, even the most humble,
utensils of their daily lives. The workers were not merely
subservient tenders of machines, "factory hands" and severely
specialized instruments of the wills of others. They were
individualists with the training and the opportunity to exercise
the creative faculty. Even the most lowly might be an artist.
His work was not drudgery, nor industrial slavery mechanical
repetition : his work was a duty made beautiful, thrilled with
the joy of self expression and creation.
Around the innumerable cathedrals clustered the tech-
nical schools, many of them in small towns, some of them
4 Dante and His Time. pp. 15, 16
856
THE TIMES OF DANTE [Sept.,
hardly to be considered more than villages. Education in our
modern sense of teaching everybody to read and write was
confined to the universities. At these there were more stu-
dents to the number of the population than there are today,
but the education of the craft schools was almost purely tech-
nical and artistic; an education which trained the faculties so
that the individual might express whatever was in him in the
mode which his taste and gift dictated. To anyone whose
vocation tended toward the life of letters or of the Church,
the way was open for its manifestation. No fact is more strik-
ing in reading the history of the thirteenth century than the
multiplicity of self-made men to be found among the leaders
in literature and the Church. But for the most part the work-
man was trained to work, and his work was made a thing of
beauty.
Out of the rich ore of the virile human life of his age,
which he shared in all its fullness and all its varied forms as
no mere observer but as one who bore the heat and burden
of the day out of the learning of the universities, and the
philosophy of his great masters and immediate teachers, Dante
gave us poetry that is philosophy and history and life and re-
ligion combined in the alembic of his genius, the transmuting
and preservative element of which has fixed in immortal verse
his message for all the ages : because that supreme element is
the immortal Catholic Faith. Dante learned his philosophy
and theology from the great writer that came before him:
St. Thomas; he drew his mystic lore from the Victorines of the
preceding century: from St. Francis and St. Dominic he gained
his love of nature and his fellowmen. Out of the politics of
his age he drew the inspiration of his dream of human liberty
and universal peace under the rule of Church and State. Ten
centuries not silent, but vocal with a chorus of song and phil-
osophizing, spoke to him, and through him to us of today, and
those who shall follow us, and to us and to our children he
bears aloft a torch by which men and nations may see.
DANTE THE MONARCHIST.
BY HILAIRE BELLOC.
"When Heaven was minded that o'er all the world
His own deep calm should brood, to Caesar's hand
Did Rome consign it." Paradiso VI., 55.
HOSE lines are applied to the Incarnation. They
apply also to the universal monarchy into the
temporal frame of which Our Lord was born.
Such a government of men, supreme, personal,
yet unalterable, offered too close a parallel with
the Divine Order to be neglected. The whole universe, de-
pendent on its Creator, is so governed. A Head, supreme, per-
sonal, yet unalterable, is its Ruler. Its laws, almost inflexible,
are wise because there lies behind them an active and benef-
icent Will. They are coordinate because that Will is one.
They are obeyed under pain of terrible penalties by every sub-
ject of their Author. There results a harmony which is con-
stant in mode and yet continually supervised; and the whole
is alive with authority. It would seem imperative that men
should, within their powers, mirror such a perfection in their
own constitution of a State. Such are the reflection, the mood
and the arguments which together have inclined all Christen-
dom towards the monarchical institution, from the first liberty
of the Church, in the opinion of the fourth century, to our own
time and beyond. For so long as the fact endures, reflection,
mood and argument of this kind will affect its members in
their temporal schemes of government. This reflection, this
mood, this argument mastered the mind of Dante. It was not
private misfortune or the provincial quarrel of factions which
moved him. It was the very temper of his mind; and his fixed
conclusion, informing the judgments of the Divine Comedy, is
explicit and defined in the Latin of the De Monarchia.
Monarchy for Dante is the pure and normal government
of men authority expressed through one person, united, and,
once gathered in that centre, acting downward throughout the
State with simple will. Its opposite in his eyes was chaos.
The argument against this idea of a necessary monarchy in
vot. cxnx. 55
858 DANTE THE MONARCHIST [Sept.,
the State; the effect of that argument upon the Middle Ages
and modern times, we may consider in a moment. Let us first
exemplify Dante's own pronouncement. The most lucid and
definite remaining to us, is contained in his famous little Latin
treatise, the De Monarchia, a pamphlet rather than a book.
This work is divided into three nearly equal divisions, or books,
of thirteen to sixteen chapters each, and the argument for our
purpose is discovered in the first of these books. For this first
book discusses the main and general question which still moves
us whether monarchy be a temporal necessity for the world;
while the second and third books are peculiar to the politics
of Dante's time, and argue for that particular universal mon-
archy over all Christendom, which even in that early four-
teenth century seemed possible in practice, and was every-
where accepted in theory.
Now if we turn to this little book we find in its central
chapter, the seventh, the core of the whole affair. The con-
cluding words of its few short lines are the pivot of Dante's
thesis: "Ergo et ipse scilicet humana uniuersitas ad ipsum
universum sive ad ejus principem qai deus est et monarchia
simpliciter bene respondit per unum principium tantum,
scilicet, unicum principem ex qua sequitur monarchiam neces-
sariam mundo ut bene sit" which may be translated : *Therc-
fore (Dante is resuming a previous argument), the body cor-
porate of humanity properly answers to its own informing
Source, Who is its God and Monarch through one principle
alone, to wit, that of having one sole chief; whence it follows
that monarchy is necessary to the world if the world is to go
well." The diction is antique, but the passage might be put
into current terms thus: "We have seen that humanity only
properly corresponds to its own nature and origin and there-
fore only works smoothly and well inasmuch as it obeys God,
its Source and Author; but God is thus a monarch. Whence
we conclude that a mundane parallel monarchy in temporal
affairs is necessary to the well-being of mankind."
This is not, of course, a mere statement. It has been led
up to in the previous pages. Dante notes how all regimen is
in necessary practice that of one commander in a family, its
head; in a village, its executive officer or lord. Indeed, we all
know how the moment action is at stake, as distinguished from
deliberation, the preparative to action, we meet at once and
1921.] DANTE THE MONARCHIST 859
necessarily appoint executive individuals. The football team
must have its captain; the regiment its commander; the whole
army its general, as Napoleon had; two good generals are
worse than one bad one. Dante quotes "a house divided
against itself," and the proverbial curse on "an equal in one's
own house." He marshals the abstract arguments that man
exists for the free exercise of his faculties; that this requires
peace; that peace is only possible under a united executive;
that a united executive can only ultimately mean one man.
He supports himself on Aristotle, the tutor of the human race.
He emphasizes the metaphysical truth that unity in variety is
only achieved through the dominance of a single conscious-
ness. He brings forward the practical truth, the truth derived
from experience, that where one man can do a thing as well as
many, it is better to leave it to one. Thus many are required
to lift a heavy weight which one could not move. But if you
want a precis of a book, one good secretary will do the job far
better for you than three. He advances the weighty considera-
tion that efficiency demands concentration; and that, there-
fore, the directing force of any operation is best found in one
place, one brain.
But while Dante is studious to marshal with marvelous
concentration the converging and various arguments in sup-
port of his contention, the underlying idea runs through all,
and emerges in this central chapter. To the atheist the world
is but chaos, and he may mop up, as he chooses, a philosophical
mess of his own making. But to the Christian the universe is
an ordered scheme, monarchic, under one Creator and direct-
ing Power. Therefore our temporal constitution should be its
parallel. This profound thought, the unceasing tendency of
Europe, he expands through the remainder of that first book.
"Entia nolunt male disponi; malum autem pluralitas princi-
patum; nnus ergo princeps," quotes he from the ancients.
"Beings reject their ill-ordering, but their ordering by diverse
directors is ill; therefore one director." Justice needs a
justiciar, a person through whom to act. Again, without jus-
tice there is nothing but ill ease.
But the exposition which will most vividly strike the mod-
ern reader, I think, is that to which Dante turns in the next
chapter, the twelfth. It is the point most forgotten today, and,
therefore, to many most paradoxical. Humanity to do well
860 DANTE THE MONARCHIST [Sept.,
must be free; but it cannot be free under many divergent and
separate masters. One superior to all alone can secure and
continue the freedom of all. Bayard, centuries later, said the
same thing spontaneously; a soldier, blurting it out as a thing
vividly seen and known, says: "A country without a king is
a land of brigands." We today, with all the parliamentary
countries of our world subject to a few despicable rich, the
paymasters of our politicians, may well echo that phrase. In-
deed, Dante here hit the strongest practical point in favor of
monarchy the passion in men for freedom, and he found the
word for those politicians in the non-monarchical State who
ruin men's liberties for a theory or for private gain. "Poli-
tizantes," he calls them a good term "politicasters," men who
make a trade of politics the bane of their kind, they overrun
and are the increasing irritant of the modern State.
Men are hardly to be moved to monarchy by any general
argument, nor even by the desire for greater justice, but after
an experience of what loss of liberty follows on putting power
in the hands of the many, or of a few, then they cry out for
monarchy. "Existens sub monarchia," says Dante, "potissime
liberum est." "He that lives under a monarch is the most
free." Such being the cogency of Dante's argument and its
exposition, we must examine the other side. Men have
throughout history reacted against monarchy over and over
again. Nations and cities have thrown it over at vast effort,
risk and pain. They have grown to hate its name. They have
created traditions so opposed to kingship that even when king-
ship was virtually restored, as in Rome, the word "king" was
forbidden. Why was this if monarchy were really the neces-
sarily right form of government, the only form under which
men at once felt at home? Consonant with their being, it would
not so repeatedly have raised such anger against itself. It
would not so often have failed in its task. States would not
have been found to proceed for centuries without a trace of
it. What are the counter arguments ? What has the opponent
of Dante to say? In the first place, let us note certain facts
apart from this general fact in history of repeated disgust with
monarchy. The first fact we note is this, that monarchy in the
purest form has very rarely existed or at least for any length
of time. Over-large bodies of men, nations of millions, towns
of many thousands have been governed monarchically; but not
1921.] DANTE THE MONARCHIST 861
tribes of hundreds, nor villages, nor mountain valleys, nor
separate small islands. And this absence of monarchy in
small units is a sign of something wrong in the argument.
Next we observe that a group of men left entirely to them-
selves invariably adopt a non-monarchical form of govern-
ment. They always meet in concourse to decide affairs. A
shipwrecked crew, a small body of colonists in a new land, a
band of rebels, any original body beginning its experience,
may, indeed, choose a head; but it always acts in fundamentals
as a community of equals. Man left to himself, before tradi-
tion or complexity grow up, behaves as a democrat. Later he
may discover that the idea of a community governing a com-
munity, as a free man governing himself, is unworkable; but
at the outset it is what he attempts as a matter of course. And
this second historical fact is a second sign that monarchy is
not obvious or native to mankind as its sole instinctive
constitution.
Moreover, Dante's argument from the Divine parallel is
not complete. Upon examining the argument, we discover
that it has a double flaw. In the first place, the regimen of the
universe involves the word "Creator," and that makes a vast
difference between the two limbs of Dante's parallel. The limb
of the universe is general; but the limb of a State constitution
is particular. Gould we point to the king, or emperor, or
president (the title does not matter) of a monarchical State as
being also the State's creator, his claim to universally inde-
pendent rulership would, indeed, be strong; but he is nothing
of the sort. He is only one of its units, a man like any other
man, raised to the exercise of a particular function. The
creator of a thing knows all about that thing. It is in a sense
a part of himself. He will, further, especially love that thing
which he has created. The creator, acting as monarch, will
presumably act both with wisdom, born of knowing his subject,
and with love for it; therefore, for its good, just as a parent
will presumably show the same qualities in the government of
a child. But a human monarch is in no way connected with
such ideas. His knowledge of what he has to govern may vary
from a very good working acquaintance to a complete ignor-
ance; and his affection for what he has to govern may vary
from very great love to indifference and from indifference to
hatred.
862
DANTE THE MONARCHIST [Sept.,
Further, that mysterious mutual sentiment, upon which all
human order and all corporate life depend, I mean the senti-
ment of authority, as felt at once by those who exercise it and
those who are subject to it, is essentially a function of creative
power. God has supreme authority because He has made all.
The parent has a lesser but real authority as the producer of
the child. And the State has, in its own sphere, a due author-
ity which we all recognize because but for the State we should
not be what we are. In a sense the State is our maker
"aiictoritas ex auctoriate." Now, in this character, authority
to human instruments other than a creative one, can be no
more than a delegated authority. The king or president, the
parliamentary oligarchy in a modern European State, the
judge and the magistrate, all these are, indeed, clothed with
authority, and it is necessary that their authority should be
recognized; but it is not an authority of their own; it is lent
by the State. In the same way schoolmasters or guardians
have authority; but it is authority delegated by the parent and
has no other source. When, therefore, the claim to mon-
archical government is advanced as though it were necessary
to the good of man, when it is advanced on the parallel of the
monarchical government of the universe by God, a full analysis
at once discloses an error in the parallal. The government of
the universe is that of the Creator; but a monarch is not the
creator of the State.
The second flaw in the Dante argument, and in the argu-
ment of all those who react towards monarchy in troubled
periods, is the contrast between will and the absence of will.
The universe is governed by God as a monarchy; and receives
from that form its unity and harmony. But the unity and
harmony are marred or increased by the presence of free wills
which act against or with the Divine purpose. Inanimate things
lend themselves perfectly to the absolute monarchy; animated
things perhaps less perfectly. But all are directed by one
regular plan. Fully intelligent beings can, and do, rebel.
They also can, and do, further the Creator's power according
as their will is evil or good. The completeness of the mon-
archic argument, even where a Creator is concerned, is inter-
rupted by the existence of will in the universe created by Him
to be free. Now in this complete, universal viewpoint, will is
but a part of the business. In the matter of the State, will is
1921.] DANTE THE MONARCHIST 863
not part of the business, but the whole of the business. The
constitution of the State means first, an instrument for the
ordering of a very large number of separate wills whether by
persuasion or control or both. And second, the settlement of
declared limits within which private individual wills may be
ordered, but outside which private and individual wills act
independently. It is clear that such a state of things is far
from being parallel with the government of the universe.
Any form of government which proposed to order the will
of the citizens in all details would be an odious tyranny and,
on the face of it, inhuman. Nor could anyone pretend that the
conforming of one's own will to that of the government is a
necessarily good act, as is the conforming of the will of the
creature to the will of the Creator. This, then, is the second
flaw in the parallel that the monarchic government of men
is so different from the monarchic government of the universe
that any human form of government must be very limited if
it is to be just. Dante really admits this indirectly, as do all
monarchists, when he says, what they all say, that monarchy
gives more freedom than any other form of government. The
statement might be expanded into this: "Precisely because
monarchy is the natural and instinctive government of man,
individual liberty, that great normal human condition, is
better preserved under it than under any other form of gov-
ernment." But in saying that, Dante and his successors are at
once weakening their great main argument of the parallel
between God's government of the world and a human con-
stitution.
Apart from these negative considerations of the weakness
of Dante's argument, there is an all important positive con-
sideration which destroys the universal application of the
statement, that monarchy is necessary to the good government
of men. It is a positive consideration which does not prevent
us from supporting monarchy under the conditions where we
find it good. But it is a positive consideration which does
prevent our saying that monarchy is everywhere and neces-
sarily good. This positive consideration is the undeniable
definition of sovereignty, a definition common to all the great
philosophers, and, indeed, unavoidable by common sense.
Sovereignty, the principle of ultimate authority, the source
whence all political authority is derived, resides in the com-
864 DANTE THE MONARCHIST [Sept.,
munity, and every executive officer, no matter how exalted, no
matter how much surrounded and supported by tradition,
habit or impressive symbols, is nothing more than the delegate
of the community. He is, in the technical language of political
science, a "Prince," and over him in the last resort is the com-
plete organization of the nation or city for whom he acts. A
monarch can never be a full sovereign in the exact sense of
that term. The thing would be a contradiction in terms. The
tradition of human thought from Aristotle to Suarez agrees.
And each one of us agrees in practice as may be seen by all our
phrases when we discuss the just limits of authority in the
State, and when we protest against tyranny.
When St. Thomas, by far the greatest of all thinkers,
speaks of government, he always speaks of the action of the
"Prince," by which he means not only an hereditary monarch,
or even an elected monarch, but any form of supreme author-
ity. Thus in a small republic like Andorra, which has worked
successfully and to the eminent good of its citizens for cen-
turies as a complete democracy, the "Prince" is the assembly
of the whole people. When the people are not assembled,
sovereignty still resides in their general body. When they
are specially convened in an assembly, they form an executive
organ which is the "Prince." The great Jesuit put the truth in
its simplest form when he said: "If the community be not
sovereign, what is?" It is manifestly absurd for one man or
several men or many men, being but a part of the whole State,
to say: "I or we have the moral right to govern all the rest
whether they admit that right or not." It is manifestly absurd,
because if John Jones can say that, there is no reason why
Thomas Smith should not say it also, and Bill Brown or any-
one else. The one has just as much claim as the other. And
since these claims are contradictory, they make nonsense.
We often hear it said loosely in conversation and discus-
sion that such and such a person or body has the constitutional
right to govern, and that any contradiction of that right is
immoral, being an act of rebellion or sedition. But if we do
not imply in the statement the truth, that the right to govern
ultimately proceeds from the community, we are talking non-
sense. It is nonsense which has cropped up over and over
again in history, and which is particularly rife today. But
nonsense it remains. And it is due to that prime cause of all
1921.] DANTE THE MONARCHIST 865
nonsense the refusal or inability to state first principles.
Dante, in his famous pamphlet, did not carry the argument
down to these fundamentals. What he is really doing there
is pleading for the excellence of a particular kind of prince,
to wit, a monarch; but his affection for this device of govern-
ment, monarchy, so colored his thought that he writes almost
as though it were not one device of government, but something
in the very nature of all government.
At this stage I think the modern reader may well com-
plain that I have wasted a good deal of his time in examining
a curious political phase of the later Middle Ages, which may
indeed have high historical interest, but is of no practical
value in modern debate. The first impression conveyed by the
constitutions in which the modern men of our race conduct
their public affairs, is a complete negation of monarchy.
Arguments for, or against, monarchy little concern our imme-
diate and vital interest, since modern men are in a habit which
rejects, for the moment at least, the whole conception of direc-
tion by one will. But I will maintain, on the contrary, that
if we look ever so little below the surface, we shall discover
the debate to be of a very high immediate interest. I will
maintain that the argument is deeply concerned with changes
which are passing before our eyes today. And I would even
add that, within the lifetime of most of those who may read
these words, the appetite for monarchy, already implicit in so
much that we do, will begin to express itself explicitly in
writing and in speech. The greatest political issue it involves
will once more form a subject of violent political debate. The
world has fallen into very great groups; ease of communica-
tions; vast areas of common speech; mechanical and concen-
trated production due to physical discovery, have done this,
and, precisely because these areas are so great, common action
becomes difficult in them save through the expressed will of
one man. Government, nominally democratic, has fallen into
the hands of oligarchies, parliaments which are much more
clubs and cliques than representative assemblies; small cabals
of great capitalists, etc. Men do not tolerate indefinitely the
arbitrary assumption of power, and inevitably, by the mere
force of things, the remedy will impress itself not only upon
attention, but right into actual instructions.
Consider, for instance, the actual working of government
866
DANTE THE MONARCHIST [Sept.,
in the United States. It is a commonplace with us in Europe
that the government of the whole community of the Republic
and of its great cities is, in the main, monarchic. We often
envy over here the consistency and directness which that mon-
archic principle procures. The President of the United States
has far more power than any individual in an European
State, though even with us the beginning of the process is
apparent. The mayor of a great American city has indef-
initely more direct personal power than any individual in
London or Paris. And this political development in a country
where public opinion is so lively, where the will of the com-
munity is so directly felt, and where such vast numbers are
involved, has given great matter for thought to all of us in
Europe. It is worth following.
Again, we have observed that in the Great War and its
aftermath, individuals, whether worthy or unworthy, merely
because they could act as individuals, exercised enormous
powers. It was supreme and personal command which sud-
denly and finally won the War. It was the breakdown of a
corresponding unity of direction on the other side that lost
the War. And since the cessation of hostilities the fate of the
world has been directed by figures often comic in their in-
competence. Men were mere politicians, yet men possessing
enormous power because great masses fall naturally under
simplicity of direction. The process will continue to expand
and that, I imagine, very rapidly. The Hague quarrel between
the modern wage-earner, dispossessed and increasingly un-
willing, and his unworthy capitalist master, will breed leaders.
Now a leader is a monarch. In the end of the process you may
return to this strangely distant, but also strangely applicable
and convinced and intensive, mood which filled Dante's mind
which shines through all the Divine Comedy and which is dis-
tilled into the Latin of the De Monarchia. It is high time that
little book was studied again.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS,
POPE BENEDICT XV.
f 1^0 Our beloved sons the professors and students of all the Catholic
*- institutions for instruction in literature and higher culture on the
sixth centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri.
BENEDICT XV., POPE.
Beloved sons, Health and the Apostolic Benediction. Amongst the
many famous geniuses who are glories of the Catholic Faith, and who,
besides leaving in other fields of knowledge, have left especially in
literature and art immortal fruit of their ability, deserving greatly of
religion and civilization, a special position has been attained by Dante
Alighieri, the sixth centenary of whose death will soon be celebrated.
But perhaps his singular greatness has never been set forth in such
strong light as today, when not only is Italy, which is justly proud
of having been his birthplace, exerting herself to honor his memory,
but all civilized nations through fitting committees of the learned are
preparing to celebrate his memory in order that this exalted figure, the
pride and ornament of humanity, may be honored by the whole world.
Now, in this wonderful chorus of all good men it is fitting that Our
voice should not be wanting but that We should in a certain sense take
the lead, inasmuch as, first and foremost, the Church has a parental
right to call Alighieri her own. As, then, at the beginning of Our
Pontificate, in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Ravenna, We
promoted the restoration of the church where the ashes of the poet
repose, so now, at the beginning of the centennial festivities, it has
seemed right to address you all, beloved sons, who cultivate letters
under the maternal vigilance of the Church, in order to show more
clearly the intimate union of Dante with this Chair of Peter and how
the praise bestowed on such an exalted name necessarily redounds in
no small measure to the honor of the Catholic Church.
And, first of all, since the divine poet during his entire life pro-
fessed the Catholic religion in an exemplary manner, it can be regarded
as in harmony with his wishes that this solemn commemoration should
take place, as it will, under the auspices of religion and that, if it is
completed at St. Francis', Ravenna, its beginning is at Florence, in his
beautiful Church of St. John, to which his thoughts were turned with
intense longing in the later years of his life when he was an exile,
868 ENCYCLICAL LETTER [Sept.,
desiring to be crowned there as a poet at his baptismal font. Born in
an age which received as an inheritance from the past the splendid
fruits of doctrine and philosophical and theological speculation, and
transmitted them to future ages with the stamp of the rigorous Scholas-
tic method, Dante, amidst the various currents of thought which were
then diffused amongst the learned, became a disciple of that prince of
the Schools, whose teaching was so clear owing to the angelic character
of his intellect, St. Thomas Aquinas, and from him derived almost all of
his philosophical and theological science; though he did not neglect
any branch of human knowledge and drank largely at the fountains of
the Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Having thus become acquainted
with almost all the knowledge that could be attained in his day and
having been specially nourished with Christian wisdom, when he
prepared to write it was from the sphere of religion that he undertook
to treat a subject which was immense and of the greatest importance.
Wherefore, if the wonderful vastness and force of his genius is to be
admired, we must also recognize the powerful impulse of inspiration
which he derived from Divine Faith and which enabled him to embel-
lish his immortal poem with the multiform lights of revealed truths
no less than with all the splendor of art. In fact, his Commedia,
which has deservedly received the title of "Divine," even in the
different symbolical stories and in the records of the life of men on
earth, aims at nothing else than to glorify the justice and providence of
God, Who governs the world in time and in eternity and punishes or
rewards the actions of individuals and of human society.
Therefore, in accordance with Divine Revelation, shine forth in
this poem the majesty of the one Triune God, the Redemption of the
human race effected by the Word of God made Man, the great mercy
and goodness of Mary, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, and finally
the heavenly happiness of the Saints, the Angels and men, to which
indeed in the opposite region, in Hell, are set the punishments ordained
for the guilty; between both being fixed the seat of souls destined, after
expiation, to heavenly bliss. It is truly marvelous how wisely these
and other Catholic dogmas are interwoven in the whole of the work.
And, if the progress of astronomical science showed that there was no
basis for this conception of the world and that the spheres supposed by
the ancients do not exist, seeing that the nature, number, and course
of the stars and the planets are altogether different from what they
thought them to be, the fundamental principle was not the less true that
the universe, whatever be the order that sustains it in its parts, is
governed by the will by which it was established of Almighty God,
Who moves and rules all things and Whose glory shines more in one
part and less in another, and that this earth which we inhabit, although
t be not the centre of the universe, as was believed at one time, was
the abode of our first parents and, therefore, the witness of their
unhappy fall and of man's redemption by the death of Our Lord
Jesus Christ.
1921.] ENCYCLICAL LETTER 869
Wherefore the divine poet explained the triple life of the souls
that he had arranged in his mind, so that in declaring before the last
judgment the damnation of the wicked, the purgation of the good
spirits, and the eternal happiness of the blessed, he appears to seek
clear light in his close knowledge of the Faith.
Now, amongst the truths prominently brought out by Alighieri in
his threefold poem, and also in his other works, we believe that these
especially may prove instructive to people of the present time. That
Christians owe supreme reverence to the Holy Scriptures and ought
to receive with perfect docility what they contain, he loudly proclaims
when he says that though there are many copyists of the Divine Word,
one alone is Dictator: God Who has deigned to indicate to us His will
through the pens of many, 1 a splendid expression of a great truth.
So also, when he states that the Old and the New Testament, which are
prescribed for eternity, as the Prophet says, contain spiritual teachings
which transcend human reason, imparted by the Holy Spirit, Who,
through the Prophets and the sacred writers, through Jesus Christ,
co-eternal Son of God, and His disciples, revealed the supernatural
truth necessary for us. 1 Most correctly, therefore, does he say con-
cerning the future life; "We have the certainty of it in the most
truthful doctrine of Christ, which is the way, the truth and the light;
the way, because through it, without obstruction, we proceed to the
happiness of immortality; the truth, because it is free from all error;
the light, because it illumines us in the darkness of worldly ignorance."
Nor does he show less reverence for those venerable chief Councils
it which none of the Faithful doubts that Christ was present; and
in great esteem with him were also the writings of the Doctors, St.
Augustine and the others, as to whom he says that anyone who doubts
that they were aided by the Holy Spirit, has never seen their fruits, or,
if he has seen them, has never tasted them. 4
Astonishing is the high opinion Alighieri held of the authority of
the Catholic Church and the power of the Roman Pontiff as that on
which is based every law and institution of the Church itself. Where-
fore, this energetic admonition to Christians: "You have the Old and
the New Testament and the Pastor of the Church who guides you:
this is sufficient for your salvation." He felt the evils from which the
Church suffered as if they were his own, and, deploring and execrating
every rebellion against the supreme head, he thus wrote to the Italian
Cardinals during the stay of the Popes at Avignon:
"We, then, who confess the same Father and Son, the same God
and Man, and the same Mother and Virgin; we, for whom and for
whose salvation was said to him who out of love was interrogated three
times: 'Peter, feed the sheep of My holy fold;' we of Rome (of that
Rome for which, after the pomp of so many triumphs, Christ in word
and work confirmed the empire of the world, and which Peter, and
l De Monarchta III., 4. De Monarchia III., 3, 16. 3 Convivio II., 9.
4 D Monarchia III., 3.
870 ENCYCLICAL LETTER [Sept.,
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, consecrated as the Apostolic See with
their own blood), are constrained with Jeremiah, lamenting not for the
future, but for the present, to grieve for as widowed and deserted; we
are oppressed by sorrow at seeing her thus suffering and also at seeing
the lamentable plague of heresy."'
For him the Roman Church is the pious mother or Spouse of the
Crucified; and to Peter, infallible judge of revealed truth, is due perfect
submission in matters of faith and morals. Hence, though it was his
opinion that the dignity of the Emperor proceeded immediately from
God, still he asserts that this truth is not to be so strictly understood
that the Roman prince is subject in nothing to the Roman Pontiff;
since this mortal happiness is in some manner ordained for immortal
happiness.' In truth an excellent and wise principle, which, if it were
observed, as it should be today, would bring to States the rich fruit of
civil prosperity.
But it will be said that he attacked the Sovereign Pontiffs of his
time so bitterly and contumeliously. Yes, but these were Popes who
disagreed with him in politics and who, he believed, belonged to the
party that had banished him from his country. But we must extend
pardon to a man so tossed about by fortune's terrible waves, if with a
mind full of irritation he sometimes bursts into invectives which seem
without measure; all the more because, to inflame his anger, there were
not wanting evil reports, propagated, as is customary, by political ad-
versaries, always inclined to put a bad interpretation on everything.
Moreover, such is the weakness of mortals that even religious hearts
must become stained with the grime of the world's dust; and who will
deny that there were at that time amongst the clergy things to be re-
proved, at which a soul so devoted to the Church as that of Dante
must have been quite disgusted, and we know that men distinguished
for eminent sanctity then emphatically reproved them. But however
vehemently he rightly or rashly attacked ecclesiastical persons, not a
whit less, however, was the respect which he felt due to the Church
and the reverence for the supreme keys; wherefore, in politics he
knew how to defend his own opinion with "that homage which a pious
son should employ towards his own father pious towards his mother,
pious towards Christ, pious towards the Church, pious towards the
Pastor, pious towards all who profess the Christian religion for the
protection of truth." 7
Accordingly, having based the whole structure of his poem on such
solid religious principles, it is not surprising that it should be found a
treasure of Catholic doctrine: not only the juice of Christian phil-
osophy and theology but also a compendium of the Divine Laws which
should regulate the order and administration of States; for Alighieri
was not the man to maintain that, in order to enlarge one's country
or to gratify rulers, justice and the laws of God could be neglected by
the State, in the observance of which he well knew the welfare of the
State chiefly depended.
'Epist. viii. De Monurchia 111., 16. ~> DC Monarchia III., 3.
1921.] ENCYCLICAL LETTER 871
Wonderful, then, is the intellectual enjoyment which the study of
this great poet affords; and not less is the profit which the studious
derive from him, perfecting their artistic taste and inflaming their zeal
for virtue; only let those who approach him be free from prejudices
and open to the influence of truth. It may also be said that, whilst the
number of great Catholic poets who combine the useful with the delect-
able are not few, this is singular in Dante that, fascinating the reader
with the marvelous variety of his images, the beauty of his colors,
and the grandeur of his words and sentences, he entices him to the
love of Christian wisdom; and let no one forget that he openly con-
fessed that he had composed his poem to provide "vital nourishment"
for all. As a matter of fact we know that some, even recently, far
from Christ, but not opposed to Him, studying the Divina Commedia
with love, by Divine grace first commenced to admire the truth of the
Catholic Faith and finished by casting themselves enthusiastically into
the arms of the Church.
What we have said so far suffices to prove how opportune it is that
on the occasion of this world-centenary each one should intensify his
zeal for the preservation of the Faith, which revealed itself so lumin-
ously, if ever in others, certainly in Alighieri as a promoter of culture
and art, since in him not only is the loftiness of his genius admired,
but also the grandeur of the theme that our holy religion offered him
as a subject for song. If the acumen of his great genius brought him
near, after long meditation and study, to the classical masterpieces
of the ancients, it was still more vigorously tempered, as We have
already said, by the writings of the Doctors and Fathers, which gave
him a wing to lift himself in the horizon far above those who are
enclosed in the brief ambit of nature. Wherefore, although separated
from us by an interval of centuries, he still betrays the freshness of a
poet of our age; and certainly he is much more modern than certain
recent poets, exhumers of that paganism which was banished forever
by Christ triumphant on the Cross. Alighieri breathes the same piety
as we do, the same sentiments, the same faith, and is clothed in the
same garment, come to us from Heaven, "the truth by which we are
lifted so high."
This is his chief praise, to be a Christian poet: that is to say, to
have sung in Divine accents those Christian ideals which he passion-
ately admired in all the vigor of their beauty, being profoundly at-
tached to them and living in them. And those who venture to deny
such merit to Dante and reduce all the religious substructure of the
Divina Commedia to a vague ideology that has no foundation of truth,
overlook in Dante what is characteristic and the foundation of all his
other merits.
If, then, Dante owed such a large share of his fame and grandeur
to the Catholic Faith, this single example, not to mention others, is
enough to prove how false it is to say that the offering of the homage
of the mind and heart to God clips the wings of genius, whilst, on the
872 ENCYCLICAL LETTER [Sept.,
contrary, genius is spurred and exalted by it; and how wretchedly
they provide for the progress of culture and civilization who wish to
banish every idea of religion from public instruction. Very deplorable
in truth is the system adopted today of educating studious youth in
such a way as if God did not exist and without the slightest allusion
to the supernatural, for if in some places the "sacred poem" is not
kept out of the school and is even numbered amongst the books that
ought to be most earnestly studied, it cannot for the most part supply
the young with that "vital nourishment" which it is destined to produce,
inasmuch as, owing to disciplinary directions, it is not, as it should be,
fittingly disposed with regard to the truths of the Faith. God grant
that this celebration may have the result that wherever literary studies
are cultivated, Dante may be held in due honor and may become himself
the teacher of Christian doctrine, he who professed that his poem had
no other object than to lift up mortals from the state of misery, that is,
from sin and to lead them to the state of happiness, that is, of Divine
grace. And you, beloved sons, who are called to follow the paths of
literature under the guidance of the Church, love and hold dear the
poet whom We do not hesitate to proclaim the most eloquent singer
of Christian wisdom. The more you study him, the higher will be your
culture, irradiated by the splendors of truth, and the stronger and more
spontaneous will be your homage to the Catholic Faith.
As a pledge of heavenly favors, and in testimony of Our paternal
benevolence, We heartily grant to you all, beloved sons, the Apostolic
Benediction.
BENEDICT XV., Pope.
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