The Commonweal 1935-12-20: Vol 23 Iss 8

1935

PERIODICAL. ROOM

Commonweal

A Weekly Review
of Literature, The Arts and Public A ffairs

Friday, December 20, 1935

AAA AND THE CONSTITUTION
Michael O’Shaughnessy

SANTA CLAUS AND SCIENCE
G. K. Chesterton

CARDINAL HAYES SPEAKS OUT
An Editorial

Other articles, reviews and poems by Felix Timmermans,
Katherine Brégy, Charles Willis Thompson, Grenville Vernon,
Anne Ryan, Kurt Frank Reinhardt and James P. Cunningham

VOLUME XXIII NUMBER 8

Price 10 Cents

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

The New Catholic Dictionary

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Commonwea
A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts and Public Affairs

Epitor1AL Boarp
MicHAeEL Editor
Georce N. Suuster, Managing Editor
Mary Korars, Assistant Editor
Frepertc THompson, Assistant Editor

Joun F. McCormick, Business Manager

Published weekly and copyrighted, 1935, in the United States, by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 386 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
Entered as_ second-class matter, February 9, 1934, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Unitel States: $5.00; Canada: $5.50; Foreign: $6.00. Single copies: $.10.

the

EpiroriaL CouNCcIL
Car_ton J. H. Hayes
T. Lawrason Riccs
RicHarD DANA SKINNER
James J. WALSH

VOLUME

CONTENTS

Cardinal Hayes Speaks Out.............00. 197. The Campaign Lines Up............. aod
Charles Willis Thompson 209

Santa Claus and Science..... G. K. Chesterton 201 Kurt Frank Reinhardt 211
AAA and the Constitution................. Communic 212
Michael O’Shaughnessy 202 Seven Days’ Survey..........eceeceeeeeees 214
Triptych of the Three Kings................ Fhe Vernon 218

Felix Timmermans 204
Tyrol Christmas (verse)......... Anne Ryan 208

Previous issues of THz ComMMONWEAL are indexed in the Readers’ Guide and the Catholic Periodical Index

Friday, December 20, 1935

NUMBER 8

The James P. Cunningham 219
és The Editors, Katherine Brégy 219

CARDINAL HAYES SPEAKS OUT

ae CORE to the press accounts given of
the affair, the mass meeting conducted under
the auspices of the American Birth Control
League, in Carnegie Hall, New York, on Decem-
ber 2, endorsed unanimously by a rising vote of
the 2,500 men and women making up the audi-
ence, a resolution “that all agencies administering
family relief inform mothers on relief where they
may secure medical advice as to family limita-
tion in accord with their religious convictions.”
Speaker after speaker, described as “religious and
social work leaders,” pleaded for dissemination
among the needy of knowledge of sources of birth
control information. ‘Ranks of the needy had
been swollen by the depression, with the result
that 250,000 Yahies were born each year to
mothers on relief, it was said.” Therefore, so it
would seem, the thing to do, in the judgment of
these “religious and social work leaders” is not
to help the needy parents to care for their chil-

dren, but rather to use their poverty as a club to
teach them how to prevent babies being born to
them. And in case the poor parents “were too
dull to be taught birth control’’—in other words,
if the poor parents were normal human beings,
believing, as normal human beings always do, that
children are desirable, as life even when difficult
is always preferable to death, especially suicidal
death—why, then, such stupid people should be
taught how to mutilate and degrade their man-
hood and womanhood by “voluntary steriliza-
tion.” It is to be presumed that when they refuse
to do so, compulsory sterilization will be the next
step to be urged by the birth prevention zealots.

Another speaker, Rabbi Goldstein, chairman
of the Commission on Social Justice of the Cen-
tral Conference of American Rabbis, “deplored
the refusal of the Catholic Church to participate
in the conference’’—which, so the Herald Tribune
reported, filed into Carnegie Hall as “the organ

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

softly played ‘Kiss Me Again,’ and ‘I’m in the
Mood for Love.’” But if the Catholic Church
refused to be represented in the Manichean sym-
posium in Carnegie Hall, the most authoritative
spokesman for the Catholic Church in New York,

ardinal Hayes, the Archbishop of the diocese,
lost no time in accepting the challenge flung at his
Church, by preaching from his cathedral pulpit
on the Sunday following the birth prevention
demonstration a sermon which most justly ex-
posed the perversion of morality, and the insolent
treatment of the victims of the depression, and
the topsy-turvy economic remedy advocated by the
birth controllers. The Cardinal changed the regu-
lar assignment of preachers to occupy the pulpit
himself. He denounced as “effrontery” the action
of ‘a smug Carnegie Hall audience.” Speaking
‘as one who gives place to no man in love for his
country,” he denounced the proponents of birth
control as ‘‘Prophets of Decadence” who ‘would
fly in the face of God and bring ruin and disaster
to the land and to the civilization that some
among us, at least, still cherish.

“Who are these people that sit in soft garments
and offer affront to the poor? Are they a race
apart, superior beings with a special commission
to order the lives of others less fortunate in
worldly goods than themselves? And the women
among them, who would enjoin the poor from
motherhood, are they taking over from the poor
the responsibilities of motherhood because they
are the better able to bear the burden? You
know that they are not. The true lover of the
poor today,” he asserted, “and the true social
scientist, knows that the right approach to the
whole problem is not to keep people from having
children, but is so to pi our economic and
social structure as to make it possible for people
to have children and to rear them in keeping with
their needs. Therein lies true social leadership;
in birth prevention lies social degradation.

“In the deliberate frustration of the marriage
rivilege the Church sees an act intrinsically evil.
t is wrong not because of ill effects that may fol-

low in its train, not because of any conceivable set
of circumstances that might attend it. It would
be equally wrong even though in a particular in-
stance it might be thought to effect material good.
Evil is not to be done that good may come of it,
as Saint Paul wrote to the Christians of Rome.

“For the preservation of the race God has
given man the natural faculty of reproducing his
kind. The exercise of this faculty for pleasure
alone, with the natural result prevented by arti-
ficial means, is a perversion of this faculty, and
he who does so is as the liar, the glutton and the
drunkard. He misuses a gift of God, he offends
against nature, and so performs an act which is
condemned by God and by His Church, and which
nothing can make right.

“This teaching of the Church does not mean,
as sometimes those ignorant of the Church’s doc-
trine or hostile to her assert, that Catholics are
required to have as many children as they can,
nor that husband and wife must, each time they
make use of the marital privilege, intend that
relationship solely for the purpose of procreation.
Canon law recognizes a secondary end to mar-
riage, that of mutual love and assistance. It re-
quires only that the primary end, which is the
procreation of children, never be excluded, nor
means be taken to prevent the natural conse-
quence of the marriage act from ensuing. It is this
positive interference with the normal processes of
nature that constitutes birth control, or more ac-
curately birth prevention, as condemned by the
Church. President Theodore Roosevelt called
birth control by its right name, race suicide. His-
tory bears testimony to the part that the refusal
of parenthood has played in the decline and fall of
great civilizations. Today in our own country the
same process is already well under way. Our

opulation is no longer reproducing itself. If
judged by this standard, the United States is
already a dying nation. Yet these Prophets of
Decadence call for fewer and fewer births. As
one who gives place to no man in love for his
country, I regard such as false prophets.”

Once again the Cardinal stressed the fact
that this nation is under the patronage of the
Blessed Virgin, fountain of purity and exemplar
of motherhood.

In a recent publication entitled, ‘Population
Trends and the National Welfare,” by O. E.
Baker and T. B. Manny, issued by the federal
government, the rapid decline of the population
of the United States is startlingly proved. Since
1924 there was a decrease of 55,000 births a year
until 1930, when the depression effects lowered
the figures about 100 percent; that is, from 1930
to 1933 there was a yearly decrease of 100,000.
For 1934 there was a slight increase in births,
because of the greater number of marriages in
1933 over those of the worst depression years.
In 1934 itself, however, while the births were
slightly more, marriages again declined, so that
births are unlikely to have increased in 1935.
The declining “cae diol first began, of course, in
an industrial region, Southern ta England, and
“gradually spread, with the development of in-
dustry and commerce,” throughout the land. The
birth prevention advocates, no doubt, have aided
the Moloch of materialistic industrialism; but, as
the Catholic Church steadfastly has taught, and
as the Cardinal Archbishop of N ew York now so
powerfully proclaims, not birth prevention but
the reconstruction of our economic and social
structure is the only true and just method of aid-
ing the poor and stemming the tide of national
decadence which has already so menacingly begun.

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The Commonweal

Week by Week

gtk na skies were gloomy as the London
Naval Conference opened.. In Africa an old
native kingdom was fighting for its life, as thou-

sands of bombs tumbled from the
The sky upon men, women and chil-
Trend of dren. Another section of ancient
Events China was being entered in the

credit side of the cayasiring ledger.
These facts—and they are not the only facts of
the same kind—indicated that the diplomatic
policy of the past fifteen years has not managed
to check even rampant imperialism. Reliance
upon war as the sole effective international instru-
ment is manifestly spreading, and the last-minute
stand by the League of Nations is all that has
prevented the application of the principle of terri-
torial expansionism to Europe. Under circum-
stances like these, it is scarcely to be hoped that
so vital a matter as the regulation of naval arma-
ment should be easily disposed of. The three
major sources of disagreement are: first, the un-
willingness of Japan to accept less than absolute
parity with the {nited States; second, the per-
mission accorded Germany by Great Britain to
construct a navy rivaling those of France and
Italy; third, the dissatisfaction of other countries
with the status of German sea power. It is only
too probable that a race for domination may be
just around the corner, limited only by the will-
ingness of the several nations to raise large sums
for construction. The effect of such a finale to the
debates now in progress upon the peace and pros-
perity of world society might well be incalculable.

SEVERAL declarations by Mr. Roosevelt indi-
cate that he considers the offensive taken by the

New Deal to be complete. The
Mr. Roosevelt legislation enacted is to form the
on the charter of an America conscious of
Defensive having outgrown the horse-and-

buggy days, and determined to
master social problems according to the recipes
laid down. It must be admitted that in bulk the
new laws are impressive, and that understanding
them is hardly yet a popular pastime. Neverthe-
less the consequence of reaching a halt is to find
oneself on the defensive. The present is a time
when almost every enactment is Bein challenged,
either by those who resent the administration’s
experiments in collectivism or by those who feel
that not enough has been achieved. We are in-
clined to think that in many respects the chal-
lengers will triumph. The New Deal was by and
large in too great a hurry, governed as its ex-
ponents were by the fear that resistance would
eventually prove insurmountable. But whatever
else may fall by the wayside, the following dis-

coveries will surely remain. The nation has found
out that the information about its basic economic
activities is insufficient, and that regulating some-
thing one does not fully understand is precarious.
Doubtless it was for this reason that NRA, in
numerous ways the best part of the Roosevelt
program, was fated to fail. The nation has like-
wise found out that its fundamental constitutional
law is still unexplored, and that its courts badly
require a fresh interpretation of attitudes quite
legitimate though not inherited from Marshall
and Taney. Finally the nation has learned—and
this is at the moment so impressive—that the
question of the administrative function of govern-
ment is an exceedingly complex and difficult one.
Sound principles of engineering practise must be
applied to the federal system as a whole, if
yg is not to break down at critical moments
(as it has been breaking down) or if inter-
lapping powers are not to indulge in constant
an fam quarreling. Should the Roosevelt ad-
ministration concentrate on these matters, the job
of being on the defensive would be far less haz-
ardous and immensely more interesting.

WE WERE considerably surprised that those
who oppose participation in the Berlin games of
1936 mustered so much strength

The at the convention of. the Amateur
Olympics Athletic Union of the United
Decision States. What the convention did
was to adopt by a margin of two

and a half votes a resolution expressing “hope
and desire”’ to participate in the games, but recog-
nizing that “conditions still exist in Germany
under which it would be difficult for the Olympic
Games to be held in accordance with the funda-
mental principles thereof.” It voted down a pro-
posal to send an investigating commission of three
to Germany for the purpose of ascertaining
whether conditions favored American participa-
tion. With these decisions, we find ourselves
reasonably content. A ringing refusal to under-
write the trip was out of the question, since in
athletic circles unanimity toward Hitler does not
exist. To have pushed through a non-participation
policy by a narrow margin would have created a
reat deal of bitterness which can now be avoided.
We have every reason to believe that the antis
will not give up the fight, but will devote their
impressive energies toward promoting rival
games. ‘Thus they will avoid giving offense to
those who feel that in accordance with American
ideals freedom of choice should be granted. To
this last we dedicate ourselves anew. We believe
that the Catholic cause is aided primarily by the
sacrifices made for it. And we are convinced that
if one Catholic athlete renounces the opportunity
accorded him there will be more reason for re-
joicing than if a dozen others win athletic laurels.

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December 20, 1935

‘In accordance with this philosophy we shall de-
vote ourselves during coming weeks to demon-
strating as effectively as we can that solidarity in
the Faith is the remedy for ills like those which
Catholic Germany is experiencing in such over-
flowing measure.

WE REGRET that it is not possible to issue
“The Triptych of the Three Kings,” our Christ-

mas “feature’’ for this year, in one

A Man instalment. But though the reader
Worth will have to piece the two parts
Knowing together with a week hoe

we believe that he will feel amply

rewarded for the trouble. Felix Timmermans has
appeared once previously in American print, the
occasion being ‘Peter Brueghel,” a biographical
novel. Unfortunately few read the book, despite
its quality and interest. We believe that fate will
be kinder to the present tale, which the translator
hopes to issue soon in book form. At any rate,
Timmermans is one of the genuinely impressive
among living Catholic creative writers. Flemish
is his language, and the circumstance that it is
relatively unused—that its nouns and adjectives
have not been worn smooth by constant use—
doubtless helps to give his prose the extraordinary
colorfulness and magic which it keeps for all who
read the original. He resembles his countryman
Rubens in a flare for the sheer joy of living, but
is as careful of detail and as fond of symbolism
new style as Van Gogh himself. The world he
summons up is different from that in which we
live. It retains a peasant flavor, but is rich in
the beauty of our earth and in the beauty not of
earth. But one would be mistaken in fancying
that Timmermans ever relinquishes his allegiance
to Brueghel, whose thought plunges upon occa-
sion like a cork. We are grateful for the chance
to introduce him to readers who, we hope, will be
the nucleus of a future audience of generous size.

THE PRINCIPLE of punishment in kind has
a good deal to commend it. Of course its use

must be adjusted to the present
“To Make thelevel of law and accepted tradition.
Punishment It is no longer morally, let alone
Fit the Crime” legally, possible, for example, to

cure the thief by cutting off his
hand—if, indeed, that drastic measure ever did
cure him, collectively speaking. But, considering
the matter in terms of the present, there are other
interesting things which may be done with the
idea; as has been demonstrated more than once
in late years by the experiments of this or that
judicial mind. Graver examples might be cited,
but our present interest lies in the increasing appli-
cation of the principle to the problem of the un-
inhibited motorist. The chief punishment, of
course, is the temporarily revoked or the perma-

nently canceled driving license; and while it is not
so widespread as we ourselves should like to see
it, still it is a definitely recognized expedient, and
will probably be more generally applied in the
future. A lesser penalty, which yet should effec-
tually supplement fixed legal punishments, is the
requirement laid by certain magistrates upon
those guilty in motor crashes to visit and observe
their victims. And now one of the municipal
judges of Los Angeles has devised a treatment
for drivers whose strange mentality prompts
them to run through stop signals. ‘They must
stand in a dunce cap before a court blackboard
and write out their promise of amendment a thou-
sand times. This, in its suitability, is worthy of
“The Mikado.” It may not be productive of ‘‘in-
nocent merriment” in the non-stop maniacs under
correction; but it is on the level which they under-
stand, and is probably the only conceivable method
which can produce salutary results with them.

MUCH time has been spent diagnosing the
athlete, but little progress has been made toward
curing him of a major ill. “We
are,’ said Dr. Wilson Ferrand re-
cently to a convention of profes-
sors and teachers, “reluctantly
forced to the conclusion that it is
not feasible to enforce the standard we have set
up, against the evident belief on the part of a
number of colleges that the subsidizing of ath-
letes is a proper procedure.” That statement is
as plain as day. The colleges have stated that
their teams are amateur aggregations of students
who, since Jack would not be a dull boy, have
staged contests between hours devoted to hard
study. But in the realm of plain fact, they have
found out that the stadium is their best promo-
tion medium. It not only advertises and sells the
institution, but actually pays money into the
treasury. The teams are professional excepting
that a blanket of decency enfolds the goings on.
Morally speaking, frank and free hiring or firing
would doubtless be preferable to the careful!
evasions which so often characterize the remarks
of prexies on the topic. Why shouldn’t the cam-
pus hero capitalize on his punting ability, or get a
raise if he cracks the line harder? Yet one must
not unduly simplify the problem. Few college
athletes (excepting a number of genuine ringers)
look upon themselves as professionals. They
have a touching willingness to be taught, and are
generally animated by an ardent love for Alma
Mater. “Gifts” are to them not pay, but forms
of first aid. To alter their status would mean
depriving them of a great educational oppor-
tunity. Why should it not be possible to come
clean, put the actual facts down in print, and see
what could be done thereafter? Why give the
impression that a skeleton dwells in the closet?

Hiring
Athletes

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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal ‘ai

SANTA CLAUS

AND SCIENCE

By G. K. CHESTERTON

article could be discussed in a big book, or
a long series of books. I rather fancy that,
if it could really be reduced to its elements, we
should find the elementary truth about Catholi-
cism and Protestantism and the present problem
of our civilization. It would perhaps explain
why, in the coming Christmas, many millions of
our mature fellow creatures, so far from hang-
ing up their stockings to have them filled, will
rather hang up their hearts and heads and find
them empty; and why they will continue to enact
a fable for children to believe in, and for chil-
dren who do not believe in it. For the sake of
brevity, let me sum up such a scientific monograph
under the heads of three or four questions.
First, who was Santa Claus or who was he sup-
posed to be? Why do we actually describe this
domestic and Phare: i figure by a name in a for-
eign language that few of us know? Why should
a sort of uncle or grandfather so intimate that
he is allowed to enter by the chimney, instead of
the front-door, have on his visiting-card the
rather florid name of a distinguished foreigner?
The answer is important. It is because in my
country the saints really have crept back again
like spies. Saint Nicholas of the Children may
not come through the chimney like a burglar;
but he was really admitted through the front-
door only as a foreigner. It is part of a para-
dox, that Protestant England satisfied its intense
insularity mainly by the use of foreign words.
For instance, men cannot do without the image of
the Mother of God; the veritable Queen of
Hearts, with every sort of lovers in every sort
of land. But the Victorians got over her omni-
presence in all art by calling her “a Madonna,”
whatever that may mean. As it was British to
talk of Mary only in Italian, so it was British to
talk of Saint Nicholas only in German. So we
could tap all the traditional poetry of Christen-
dom, without calling it Catholic or even Chris-
tian. It was a sort of smuggling; we could im-
port Nicholas without paying the tax to Peter.

Second, everybody could then dispose them-
selves in elegant attitudes of sad sympathy and
patronizing pity; over a mere fairy-tale for chil-
dren, which children themselves must soon aban-
don. Santa Claus has passed into a proverb of

I WISH the subject I discuss here in a short

illusion and disillusion. A man wrote a poem
about how he had ceased to believe in Santa Claus
at the age of seven and in God at the age of sev-
enteen; and explained how he really regretted
God not much more than Santa Claus.

The

notion that the thing had ever had any relation
to any religion, or that that religion had ever
had any relation to any reason, or that it had been
a part of a real philosophy with a fringe of popu-
lar fancies but a body of moral fact, never oc-
curred to anybody. And I startled some honest
Protestants lately by telling them that, though
I am (unfortunately) no Coe a child, I do
most definitely believe in Santa Claus; though I
prefer to talk about him in my own language. I
believe that Saint Nicholas is in heaven, acces-
sible to our prayers for anybody; if he was sup-
posed to be specially accessible to prayers of chil-
dren, as being their patron, I see no reason why
he should not be concerned with human gifts to
children. I do not suppose that he comes down
the chimney; but I suppose he could if he liked.
The point is that, for me, there is not that com-
plete chasm or cutting off of all relations with the
religion of childhood, which is now common in
those who began by starting a new religion and
have ended by having no religion.

Third, do our contemporaries really know even
the little that there is to know about the roots, or
possible origins, of such romances of popular re-
ligion? I myself know very little; but a really
complete monograph on Santa Claus might raise
some very interesting questions. For instance,
Saint Nicholas of Bari is represented in a well-
known Italian picture of the later Middle Ages,
not only as performing the duty of a gift-bringer,
but as actually doing it by the methods of a bur-
glar. He is represented as climbing up the grille
or lattice of a house, solely in order to drop little
bags of gold among the members of a poor fam-
ily, consisting of an aged man and three beautiful
daughters who had no money for their wedding
dowries. That is another question for our con-
temporaries: why were celibate saints so fright-
fully keen on getting other people married? But
anyhow, I give this only as an example out of
a hundred, which might well be followed up if
only grown-up people could be induced to take
Santa Claus seriously. It looks as if it might be
the root of the legend. To see a saint climbing
up the front of our house would seem to most of
us as odd as seeing a saint climbing down our
chimney. Very probably neither of the things
happened; but it might be worth while even
for scientific critics to find out what actually
did happen.

Fourth, what do our great modern education-

ists, our great modern psychologists, our great
makers of a new world, mean to do about the

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

breach between the imagination and the reason,
if only in the passage from the infant to the man?
Is the child to live in a world that is entirely fan-
ciful and then find suddenly that it is entirely
false? Or is the child to be forbidden all forms
of fancy; or in other words, forbidden to be a
child? Or is he, as we say, to have some harmless
borderland of fancy in childhood, which is still

a part of the land in which he will live; in terra
viventium, in the land of living men? Cannot the
child pass from a child’s natural fancy to a man’s
normal faith in Holy Nicholas of the Children,
without enduring that bitter break and abrupt
disappointment which no wmarks the passage of
a child from a land of make-believe to a world
of no belief?

AAA AND THE CONSTITUTION

By MICHAEL O’SHAUGHNESSY

T HAS not escaped the notice of the ‘‘man
on the street” that the owners and managers
of capital, as an economic group in our

population, oppose the power of government to
regulate the conduct of individuals in the conduct
of the nation’s business. They oppose social leg-
islation of every type. Their chief reliance in
maintaining this anti-social attitude, strange to
say, is the Constitution of the United States.

This highly privileged class stresses the ‘“‘due
process” as against the “welfare” clause of the
Constitution, the letter against the spirit; in effect,
they maintain that property rights are superior
to Seite rights, unmindful of the fact that the
maintenance of property rights depends upon the
protection afforded the individual citizen by
the Constitution. They seek to circumscribe the
powers of the federal government under the com-
merce clause to the regulation of the transport of
merchandise and commodities from one place to
another across state lines. Every effort by the
federal government, under the commerce clause
of the Constitution, to regulate the business rela-
tions of the citizens of one state with the citizens
of another, is met by the smug reference to the
pronouncement by the Supreme Court that “‘pro-
duction is not commmerce.” This is self-evident,
but methods of production within a state can be
such as to retard or destroy interstate commerce,
in which case the Congress, in our opinion, has
the power to exclude goods so produced from in-
terstate commerce without in the least abridging
the rights of citizens of any state to conduct pro-
duction in any manner permitted by the laws of
such state, provided of course that the goods are
for consumption within that state.

The principal difficulty seems to be in agreeing
upon a definition of commerce. The Supreme
Court in its Cecision in the case of Gibbons v.
Ogden (9 Wheaton, page 68), gives a definition
p? commerce of paramount importance in the de-
bate over the reciprocal powers and duties of the
federal government and the states in the matter
of interstate commerce. The Court’s definition
in part is as follows: “Commerce, undoubtedly, is

traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse.
It describes the commercial intercourse between
nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches,
and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying
on that intercourse.’

It is clear that in the mind of the Supreme
Court, at least in the above decision, interstate
commerce is business intercourse between citizens
of the several states in the Union. It would follow
that Congress has the power under the Constitu-
tion to prescribe rules for carrying on business
intercourse among the citizens of the several states
to promote and preserve interstate commerce.
Such rules perhaps could be most effectively pre-
scribed by the Congress requiring federal char-
ters for corporations doing an interstate business.

The statement was frequently made in the
lowest depths of the depression in 1932, by many,
even the most reactionary financiers and captains
of industry, that the system of distribution (of

oods and services) had broken down in the

nited States. It had broken down because the
owners of capital insisted upon so large a propor-
tion of the national income that the purchasing
power of workers and farmers had been curtailed
to the point that the exchange of goods and ser-
vices between the citizens of the various states
(interstate commerce), was so obstructed that
the economic machinery of the nation had all
but collapsed.

The preservation of commerce between the
several states depends upon the workers and
farmers, the major consuming groups in our
population, receiving a larger proportion of the
national income to maintain purchasing power at
a level at which capital can be profitably employed
in industry. It is clear that the preservation of
interstate commerce depends upon the establish-
ment of a just relation in the income of the num-
erically small group of owners of capital and the
vast majority of the population, as represented
in the worker and farmer groups. The power to
regulate interstate commerce most certainly in-
cludes the power to “prescribe rules” of business
intercourse to establish this just relation.

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The Commonweal

203

We further conclude from the above that the
power of the federal government to regulate in-
terstate commerce must necessarily include the
power to regulate business intercourse among the
citizens of the various states by enunciating social
standards for production in industry and agricul-
ture that are necessary to preserve interstate com-
merce. The attempt to raise the purchasing
power of the worker group through the NIRA
was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
principally because it did not enunciate social
standards. The result is that business is getting
better, profits increase faster than real wages,
unemployment continues to be our paramount
social and economic problem and no progress is
made in attaining a wider distribution of the
national income to increase purchasing power.

The Court of last resort will, within a com-
paratively short time, render a decision as to the
constitutionality of the Agricultural Adjustment
Act. This was emergency legislation to rescue
agriculture from the collapse which overtook it
in 1932. The original Act was amended in the
last session of Congress to meet Constitutional
objections. The increased purchasing power
among the farmers since its enactment has con-
cededly been a determining factor in recovery
through an increased demand for the products of
industry. The AAA was an attempt to raise the
prices of agricultural products to a parity with
the prices of products of industry, so that the
farmer would receive for his product a price com-
parable to that which he paid for the products
of industry.

It should be remembered that through tariff
protection the federal government imposes a duty
on imported manufactures, theoretically to pro-
tect American labor from the lower wage scales
for labor in foreign countries. It is a tax levied
by the federal government on the consumer
through the maintenance of artificial prices, the
greater proportion of which, however, has been
taken by the owners of capital instead of being

assed on to labor. The principle of the AAA
is the same. The government levies a tax on con-
sumers through processing taxes, which is paid to
the producers of agricultural products to bring
their prices up to a parity with prices for the
products of industry. There are differences in
detail in the application of the protective tariff to
benefit industry and labor and the AAA to benefit
farmers, but the principle is the same. If the
former is justified it would seem that the latter is
necessary. It is worth considering what might
be the effect if both were gradually abolished.

Should the AAA, as amended in the last ses-
sion of Congress, be found unconstitutional b
the Supreme Court, it is conceivable that agri-
culture may again sink to the depths of its posi-
tion in 1932, when the farmers had no incentive

to feed the nation as their products were selling
substantially below the cost of production.

It is inconceivable that the small group repre-
sented by the owners of capital, insist upon the
perpetuation of its privileges at the expense of
workers and farmers, which will eventually de-
stroy it. In the effort to preserve their unjust
privileges the owners of capital are “killing the
goose that lays the golden egg.” Half a loaf is
better than no bread, particularly when the loaf
is twice as large as it ever had any right to be.

It is certainly within the power of Congress,
acting under the commerce clause of the Consti-
tution, to regulate “‘business intercourse” between
the citizens of the various states in a manner to
insure a more equitable distribution of the national
income as between the owners of capital, workers
and farmers to prevent the collapse of the eco-
nomic life of the nation. This cannot be accom-
plished by increasing the national debt to pay
doles to the unemployed as government thereb
engages itself to pay interest indefinitely on suc
borrowings to the owners of capital on unproduc-
tive loans. It cannot be accomplished by con-
stantly increasing taxes which diminish the na-
tional income, eventually to the detriment of
workers and farmers. It can be to a considerable
extent accomplished (1) by Congress enunciating
social standards, nationally, in establishing living
wages by the year, of a stipulated number of
work days, for workers engaged in the production
of goods, adequate to provide consumption needs,
that are destined to move in interstate commerce;
(2) by abolishing tariff subsidies to industry; and
(3) by creating a federal agency to provide con-
sumers with continuous and accurate information
on demand and supply, production costs, prices, etc.

Minimum wages by the hour for a fixed num-
ber of hours per day is a cruel delusion. Subsidies
to industry aggravate the maldistribution of
wealth and the ignorance of consumers breeds
fraud and social injustice. Increased purchasing
power for workers with equality established be-
tween industry and agriculture and consumers
intelligently informed, would go a long way to-
ward creating a commodity price structure in
which all classes of the citizenry would receive
just rewards for the contribution each makes to
the welfare of the people as a whole. Somewhere
between the extremes of the unregulated profit
urge and “production for use,” a compromise is
possible, which may retard the disintegration of
our social and economic order until such time as
a fundamental solution could be attained.

Unless an equitable distribution of the national
income, envisaged above, can be brought about
by congressional action, the Union of forty-
eight states in the United States of America will
eventually be destroyed by sectional greed and
class strife.

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204

The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

TRIPTYCH OF THE THREE KINGS

By FELIX TIMMERMANS

I. Centerpiece

HE DAY before, toward dusk, a creaky
little kermis wagon passed down the street.
It was drawn through the falling snow
by an old man and a dog. Through the window
pane, one saw the pale face of a young, slender
woman. Her eyes were large and troubled. They
had gone by, and those who had seen them
thought no more about it... .

It was Christmas day and the air stood frozen
crystal clear, pale blue over the wide world be-
decked with white fur. "

The lame shepherd Suskewiet, the eel-fisher
Pitjevogel with his bald head, and the blear-eyed
beggar Schrobberbeeck went from house to house
dressed as the three Holy Kings. With them
they carried a cardboard star which turned on a
wooden pole, a stocking to hold the money which
they collected and a double-sack for food. They
had turned their shabby coats inside out. The
shepherd had on a high hat, Schrobberbeeck wore
a crown of flowers left over from the last pro-
cession, and Pitjevogel, who turned the star, had
smeared his face with shoe blacking.

It had been a good year with a fat harvest.
Every peasant had a pig in brine, and now they
sat pufing at their pipes with their paunches be-
fore the warm stoves and, carefree, awaited the
coming of spring.

Suskewiet, the shepherd, knew such lovely
pious songs of olden days, Pitjevogel turned the
star with such regularity and the beggar made
such pitiful, convincing beggar’s eyes, that when
the red moon came up, the foot of the stocking
was filled with money and the sack was blown
up like a bellows. It was full of bread, ham
bones, apples, pears and sausage.

They were in the best of spirits and nudged
each other with their elbows. They could already
taste the long swigs of “vitriol” they would enjoy
later in the evening in the Water Nymph. They
would round out their empty bellies with the good
tasty food and make them so taut that one could
squash a flea on them.

It was not until the peasants had put out their
lamps and had gone yawning to bed, that they
stopped their singing and began to count their
money in the clear moonlight. Boy, O boy! Gin
for a whole week! And they could even buy some
fresh meat and tobacco as well.

With the star on his shoulder the black Pitje-
vogel stamped quickly ahead and the other two
followed, their mouths watering. Gradually a

strange feeling of oppression came over their
rough souls. They were silent. Was it because
of all the white snow on which the pale moon
stared down so fixedly? Or was it the mighty
ghost-like shadows of the trees? Or was it be-
cause of their own shadows? Or was it this
silence, the silence of moonlit snow, in which not
even an owl was heard nor a dog’s bark from
near or far?

But these lovers and loafers of out-of-the-way
streets and unfrequented river banks and fields
were not easily frightened. They had seen much
that was wonderful in their life. Will-o’-the-
wisps, spooks and even real ghosts. But this was
something different. Something like the choking
fear at the approach of some great happiness.
It closed in around their hearts.

The beggar took courage and said, “I am not
afraid.”

“T’m not either,” said each of the others at the
same time. Their voices trembled.

“Today is Christmas,” comforted Pitjevogel.

“And God will be born anew,” added the shep-
herd with childish piety.

“Ts it true that the sheep will then stand with
their heads turned toward the East?’ asked
Schrobberbeeck.

“Yes, and the bees will sing and fly.”

‘And you will be able to see right through the
water,” said Pitjevogel, “but I have never
done it.”

Again there was this silence, which was dif-
ferent from silence. It was as if one could feel a
soul trembling in the moonlight.

“Do you believe that God will really come to
earth again?”’ the beggar asked timidly, thinking
of his sins.

“Yes,” said the shepherd, “but where, no one
knows. . . . He only comes for one night.”

Their hard shadows now ran before them and
increased their fear. Suddenly they noticed that
they had lost their way. It was the fault of the
endless snow which had covered over the frozen
streams, the roads and the entire countryside.
They stood still and looked around; all about was
snow and moonlight, and here and there trees
but no house, and even the familiar mill was
nowhere to be seen. They had gone astray, and
in the moonlight they could see the fear in each
other’s eyes.

“Let us pray,” begged Suskewiet, the shepherd,
“then no evil can happen to us.”

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The beggar and the shepherd mumbled a Hail
Mary. Pitjevogel began to mutter, for since his
First Communion he had forgotten how to pray.

They went around a clump of bushes and it was
then that Pitjevogel saw a stream of friendly light
in the distance. Without saying a word, but
breathing more easily, they went toward it. And
suddenly a miracle happened. All three saw and
heard it but ~~ did not dare to speak of it.
They heard the humming of bees and under the
snow, where the ditches were, it was as light as if
lamps were burning there. And against a row of
dreaming willows there stood a lame kermis
wagon and candle-light shone from its window.

Pitjevogel climbed up the small steps and
knocked. A friendly old man with a beard
opened the door. e did not seem astonished
at their strange dress, the star or the black face.

“We have come to ask you the way,” Pitje-
vogel stammered.

“The way is here,” said the man, “come in.”

Amazed at this answer they followed obed-
iently and in the corner of the cold empty wagon
they saw a young woman. She wore a blue hooded
mantle and held a very small new-born babe at
her breast. A large yellow dog lay at her side
with his faithful head on her lean knees. Her
eyes were dreaming in sadness but, as she saw the
men, they filled with friendliness and confidence.
Even the little child, whose head was still covered
with down and whose eyes were like little slits,
laughed at them and seemed particularly pleased
with the black face of Pitjevogel.

Schrobberbeeck saw the shepherd kneel down
and take off his high hat. He too knelt down and
took the procession crown from his head and sud-
denly began to regret the many sins that were on
his conscience. And then Pitjevogel bent his knee
as well. And as they knelt sweet voices swelled
about them and a heavenly happiness, oe
than any joy, filled them. And none of them
knew why.

In the meantime the old man tried to start a
fire in the small iron stove. Pitjevogel seeing
that it would not work, asked eagerly: “May I
help you?”

“Tt is no use, the wood is wet,” the man replied.

“But have you no coals?”

“We have no money,” said the old man sadly.

“What do you eat then?” asked the shepherd.

‘“‘We have nothing to eat.”

Filled with confusion and compassion, the
Kings looked at the old man and the young
woman, at the child and the bony dog. Then
they looked at each other. Their thoughts were
as one and lo, the stocking with its money was
emptied into the lap of the woman, and the sack
of food was turned inside out and all that was in

it was laid on the shaky little table. Eagerly the
old man reached for the bread and gave the young
woman a rosy apple. She turned it before the
laughing eyes of the child before she bit into it.

“We thank you,” said the old man. “God will
reward you.” ...

Once again they were under way on the road
which they now knew so well and which led direct
to the Water Nymph. But the stocking was
rolled up in Suskewiet’s pocket and the sack was
empty. They hadn’t a cent or a crumb.

“Do you know why we gave all of our earnings
to these poor people?” asked Pitjevogel.

“No,” said the others.

“TI don’t either,” Pitjevogel replied.

A little later the shepherd said, “I think I know
why. Couldn’t the child have been God?”

“What are you thinking of?” laughed the eel-
fisher. ‘God wears a white mantle with borders
of gold, and He has a beard and wears a crown,
like in church.”

“But formerly He was born in a stable at
Christmas,” asserted the shepherd.

“Yes, formerly,” said Pitjevogel, “but that was
a hundred years ago and even longer.”

“But why did we give everything away then?”

“I’m breaking my head about that, too,” said
the beggar whose stomach began to rumble.

Silently, with lips that thirsted for a generous
swallow of gin and longed for meat thickly spread
with mustard, they passed by the Water Nymph.
It was still lighted and they Scan singing and the
sounds of a harmonica.

Pitjevogel gave the star to the shepherd, whose
task it was to keep it, and without saying a single
word, but with contentment in their hearts, they

arted at the crossroads, each one going to his
bed. The shepherd went to his sheep, the beggar
to his hut of straw, and Pitjevogel to his garret
into which the snow drifted.

II. Left Wing

Today it was again Christmas. Suskewiet, the
shepherd, who each year with Pitjevogel and
Schrobberbeeck had made the rounds dressed as
the three Holy Kings, going from house to house
with a cardboard star and singing lovely old
songs, lay stretched out, sick in bed, and over him
was the shadow of death. In the corner, leaning
against the wall, was the pole with its colored
star and there also hung a crown made of tin.

He lay, where he always lay, in the sheep stall.
Through a little window next his bed he could
look out far over the snow-covered country, over
which the half-moon like a silver shuttle wove the
lovely star dress. It was the first time that he
could not accompany his comrades at Christmas.
Now the two of them were under way but still

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December 20, 1935

they sang, “We are the three kings with their
star.”

Since the miracle of last year, when they had
come upon a sm@]J kermis wagon on their rounds,
and had found there a poor man, a young woman,
and a new-born child, and for some unknown
reason, and in a spirit of reverence they had never
known before, they had knelt down and offered
all the money and food they had collected, since
that time Suskewiet had become a different person.
For he had felt certain that this little child had
been God, Who came anew to the world each year
at Christmas for one day. O, he remembered so
well how they had lost their way in the holy
hour, how they had seen light, like burning lamps
under the snow, and how they had heard bees
singing in the air. How afraid they had been
and what a heavenly sweetness had come over
him and the others as well, when they saw the
little child. How suddenly and with great emo-
tion, without consulting one another, they had
offered up their hard-earned food and pennies.

And had they not heard the poor man say, as
Pitjevogel had asked him for the way, “The way
is here”? Surely it had been the Holy Family.
He had told the priest about it, but he had chased
him out of doors and the sexton had said disdain-
fully that the shepherd was only a foundling and
that his brains had frozen. Wherever he tried to
tell that he had seen the Holy Family, the
laughed at him, and his two comrades had al-
ready forgotten the impression of that hour.
When they did think of it, they merely said,
“T'was strange, t’was strange.” But beyond that
they did not bother about it and they sinned more
each day in order to get money and gin.

But Suskewiet had changed his life from the
ground up. There had always been a faint spark
of piety smouldering in his heart, but now it
‘ flamed up to a white heat which filled him with
heavenly transport and lovely sweet feelings, so
that his body was hardly on earth. He neglected
his body and forgot to tend his sheep. He knelt
before the wayside shrines for hours on end, sang
pious songs, and prayed childish prayers. He did
penance, as well, to atone for his former sins,
and allowed nothing to stop him, when it froze,
from chopping open the ice and standing with
his bare feet in the bitter cold water. And as he
dragged his lame leg behind his herd, he con-
stantly said his rosary. When he spoke with the
peasants he no longer talked of the weather and
the potatoes, but of the Mother of God and the
Christ Child and of the blackness of sin. People
who formerly had called him simple now thought
him fully mad and avoided him. His stories, they
said, were good enough for the priest but not for
one who ran about in ordinary clothes.

With great longing old Suskewiet awaited the
new Christmas feast. It had been his duty to take

care of the star and to freshen it up each year.
This time, too, he had pasted it over with col- °
ored paper and chocolate tinfoil and decorated
it with little golden roses that had been left over
from a golden wedding. He did not wish to wear
the high hat any longer, for he had found a piece
of tin which the tinsmith had made into a pointed
crown. He would look much better in that. He
was pottering around with these, when his two
friends came to talk with him, for they had heard
that three other Kings would make the rounds
and that they had a star with a little bell and for
this reason they would probably earn more pennies.

But Suskewiet looked at them suspiciously and
said, “I will only go with you with the star 1f you
agree to give all the money and food we collect
to the poor.”

‘Are you mad?” cried Pitjevogel, the cel-fisher.

“Are we not poor enough?” asked Schrobber-
beeck, the beggar with the bleary eyes.

“No,” said Suskewiet, “all that you have you
must give to God. And whether we give it to God
or to the poor is all the same.”

“Then we will stay home,” said Schrobber-
beeck. “Do you think that I am going to sing
myself hoarse for others? One does that once
and not again.”

“TI know something better,” said the sly Pitje-
vogel. “‘We will make a star of our own. Or do
you think we can’t? ’Bye, mad Sus.”

“Do what you want to,” the shepherd called |
after them, but with this star, with which we
found God, you won’t beg any money in order
to sin.”

The heavens painted the first snow over the
earth and Suskewiet felt himself filled with spir-
itual ecstasy. He alone would now go from house
to house to collect money for the poor. But Sus-
kewiet became ill and could no longer get up from
his straw sack.

Christmas approached. The shepherd received
the Last Sacraments. He had seen the priest with
his surplice of gold come and go. It was evening
and the moon came up to look at the white world.
The tears ran down Suskewiet’s stubbly cheeks
because he could not celebrate Christmas for the
benefit of the poor. For forty-four years the star
had heard him sing his songs. Now death had
come to him. His heart was barely alive but now
and then his little reason flickered up. The peo-
ple from the farm had sat with him for a while,
but when he had fallen asleep they had gone back
to the house where the yule log burned and waffles
were baking. Sadly he heard their joyous noise.
A clarionet was playing and songs were being
sung. He had but two hours to live and he begged
Heaven to allow him to see the holy hour pass.

His pale thin face lay at an angle so that he
could see the moon in the sky and the star that

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gleamed in the corner. His hands lay bare, large
and shrivelled. The fingers were without life.
Lost as he had come to earth, a foundling, now
he was to die alone and forsaken. Only the good
sheep remained with him and lifted their heads
from time to time over the side of their stall.
The moon climbed higher and higher and con-
stantly became smaller but clear as silver. Sus-
kewiet asked for but one thing, the grace to be
allowed to go through one more Christmas hour.

He lay there for a long time. Finally he saw
here and there by the mill, women in heavy
hooded mantles with lanterns in their hands, go-
ing toward the village. The noise from the farm
house had subsided. Later he heard the chiming
of bells and the toning of an organ. At first he
could not believe his ears, for the church was
three-quarters of an hour away! But it was not
an illusion. An organ was playing! Soft, sus-
tained, singing tones swelled up, increasing with
emotion and deep reverence. He had never heard
anything so Frei in all his life. Before he could
recover from his astonishment, he heard the sheep
begin to bleat and, in the moonlight, he saw that
they had turned their heads to the East.

“It is the holy hour,” murmured Suskewiet,
trembling with excitement. “‘God, God, my star.”

He wished to get up and fetch the star, but
he could not. He exerted all his strength, pressed
the cover with his feet against the foot of the
bed, and then pulled himself up by means of
the sheet which was stretched taut. He broke
forth into a racking cough, and as it subsided,
with the sweat pouring from his forehead, he
made a slight headway and put his lean legs over
the side of the bed. He burst into another fit of
coughing but without waiting for it to cease, he
stood upright, leaned against the wall, and then
step by step, with bent knees, he went toward the
star. At last he sat on his bed again, the tin
crown on his head and the star in his arm.

When he had rested a short while, he took hold
of the string and looking out into the moonlit
night he sang in a monotone, accompanied by the
soft tones of the mysterious organ:

We are the three kings with their star,
Who have come here from lands afar,
We went and searched over hill and dale,
Over mountains, valley, glens and vale,
And where the star stood still,

We entered with good will.

The tears ran down his cheeks, his body shook
with spasms and now and again the flame of his
transfigured soul gleamed from his dim eyes.

But what or who was that in the distance? A
stream of light came over the moonlit snow,
nearer and nearer it came, straight ahead without
swerving to right or left. Astonished, Suskewiet
held his breath and thoughtlessly continued to

pull at the string and turn the star round and
round. It came nearer and nearer. Finally it
seemed to be a small child in a little white shirt
with bare feet. He carried a terrestrial globe in
his hand, and his sweet blue-eyed face and golden
hair were surrounded by a sort of rainbow-col-
ored dawn.

“Who is that?” murmured Suskewiet. “It
seems to me I have seen the little child before.”

The child came straight toward him and dis-
appeared for a moment under the window. Then
the door opened. Before him stood the little
child, clean and fresh as a wild rose. Suddenly
the stall was filled with the scent of roses.

‘Good day, Suskewiet,” said the little child,
smiling kindly. ‘Since you can no longer come to
me, I have come to you. Do you remember me?”

A look of strange wonderment came over Sus-
kewiet, and his smile revealed his two black
broken teeth. He nodded joyfully, but could not
say a single word, so great was his emotion, while
tears hung from the grey stubbly hairs of his
cheeks.

“Do you?” said the child. “Then keep on with
your song. I love to hear it.”

And Suskewiet, filled with awe, took hold of
the string and sang while his eyes blinked with
heavenly ecstasy: |

Maria she was sore afraid,

When she had heard the noise;

She thought that Herod now had come,
To seek her little child,

She thought that Herod now had come
To snatch her sweetest lamb.

__ And lo, the black apple tree which stood out-
side was not white with snow but white with deli-
cate apple blossoms. And all the sheep stood
there and looked over the side of the stall, and
those in the rear, stood up on the backs of those
in front.

“Come,” said the little child, “will you come
to our house ?”

“O yes, yes,” laughed Suskewiet. Suddenly he
felt himself well again. He wanted to put on his
trousers but it did not seem to be cold and what
is more he was in a great hurry. He took the star
and followed the child. But he turned once more
to look at his sheep who were bleating sadly.

‘“‘May they not come along?” he asked. “I am
a shepherd.”

“The more the merrier,” said the child.

“Then come along, my little ones, come.”

Suskewiet opened the gate and all followed,
one pressing against the other. And they went
out into the silvery white night. In his little warm
hand the child held that of the shepherd, and led
the old man through the untrodden snow. He
carried the star which gleamed in the moonlight,

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

and behind him came the sheep with heads bent
in reverence.

“Tt is back there,” said the little child, and
pointed in the distance to a golden palace that
reared its towers and domes high over a garden
filled with spring flowers.

“O how lovely, how lovely,” said Suskewiet,
transported, and turning to his sheep. “There the
grass will be much better, my little ones.”

And then they entered in... .

Schrobberbeeck and Pitjevogel returned from
their rounds. They were drunk with the many
glasses of gin they had had on their way. Their
crown was crooked and the star was bent. Arm
in arm they staggered along singing popular
songs. Their way led them past the farm yard.

“QO,” shouted Pitjevogel, “let us shake our
money in his ears. Not giving us his star.”

But as they looked through the window, they
saw Suskewiet sitting on his bed, dead. The tin
crown was on his head and over it shone the lovely
star. And the two men ran away in fright, leav-
ing their broken star behind them... .

The next day they found Suskewiet. All the
sheep were grazing in the field. In the stall one
smelled the scent of roses.

(The concluding part of this story will appear next week.)

Tyrol Christmas
Not like any other night is this!
It is black, crépy black
In the room
Where the mother’s heavy hand rouses children in the
gloom
Of their dark enormous bed,
And her candle’s light is spread
Along the rafters as she goes
To the cattle in the stall
Just beyond the smoky wall
Of her kitchen.
And the door
Opens more,
Creaking on its iron hinge
Near the beasts.
Then the children hear the hoofs’ little fall
In the house... .
In their house.

Not like any other night,

For the warm earthy house is awake and astir,
And the sleigh standing there before the white
Frosted panes

Has its bells in a whir

Of dancing sound.

The children do not speak,

Huddled under thick fur

On the straw of the sleigh

And they creep, and they creep, and they creep
To make place for their mother.

The bells run bright and faint

From the last clanking door,

Round and round, round and round,
Through the turns and the bends

By the crests and the fens

And the road running over iced bridges.

In the low sky the magnified stars

Shaft the cold black with gold bars

That reach from the heights to the manger.
And the space by the church is alive

With the bells and the lamps in between
The gnarled trees,

And the sheen

From the vapor of so many moving

Gives the vision of flown gauzy wings

Of a low floating swings

Of heavenly robes through the branches;
As through down a black stair,

Like globes in black air

Of vanishing light

All the angels

Melt and return

Tangle and burn

Through, the stark brittle twigs of the forest.

From the sharp, stone house by the river

The charity house by the river

Walks slowly, one after the other

The poor of this place.

Three women, old and how muffled,

Safe and unruffled,

Waiting in age.

They are first through the oaken, arched doorway,

With their thick candle’s glow on their faces,

And their stiff hands slow at the places

Where the iron sconce for the tapers bracket the ends
of the benches.

And the children gaze at the manger.
Straight and unveiled is the mother,

White as a reed, unafraid.

They see the figures of oxen

Look over a mossy wall

To warm with their patient breathing

The chill enswaddled One.

They see straw that is crisp as the new bed,
So slippery and yellow that their mother had spread
In the house for those beasts of their own—
And they think

“Not so different, not so far.”

All this in the midnight forest—
The children, the three poor women,
The blown candles like small flags unfurled,
The rugged voice singing, singing,
All this in the midnight forest
Wrapped in the midnight forest
Of the world.
ANNE Ryan.

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THE CAMPAIGN LINES UP

By CHARLES WILLIS THOMPSON

HE PRESIDEN-
TIAL campaign
of 1936 has be-
n at last—very belat-
edly. A presidential cam-
paign has four stages,
the first and longest be-
gins in the year before
the conventions, and is
the growth, development
and finally the flowering
of the decision on who shall be the candidates and
what shall be the issue. The second is the fight
for the nominations at the conventions. ‘The
third is the interlude after the nominations, in
which the parties merely shadow-box and are busy
behind the scenes organizing for the fight; an
extremely busy period for the actors, but produc-
tive of no thrills for the audience. The fourth is
the battle proper, and this stage is the shortest of
all, usually not beginning until September and not
getting down to the punches until October.

We have now entered on the first stage, and
did so on November 6, the day after the election
of 1935. This is an unprecedentedly late start,
unprecedented since the campaigns took their
present shape. A hundred years ago they were
much longer and began much earlier. The 1832
campaign, for instance, was officially started in
December, 1831, when the National Republican
Convention—in later years called the Whigs—
nominated Henry Clay and John Sergeant. Clay’s
opponent, Andrew Jackson, had been nominated
in 1825 to be elected in 1828. The Democratic
Convention of 1836 met in May, 1835, and nom-
inated Van Buren. The Whigs that year thought
it foxier politics to hold no conventions and to
side-track from the all-conquering Jackson hosts
as many electoral votes as possible by nominating
several candidates, each a favorite in his own
locality. ‘This, too, was done in 1835 and, with
some of the candidates, even earlier.

The Civil War brought a change, and the Con-
vention which renominated Lincoln was held in
June of the election year. The Republicans have
held June as the convention month ever since ex-
cept in 1868, the Democrats usually but not in-
variably waiting until July. After the nomina-
tions there is a time of furious but not much
publicized work organizing the two armies, and
the fight, so far as the public sees it, begins when
that organization is perfected, which is never any
earlier than September. Even then so much re-
mains to be done that the real cannonading does

ing the coming months.

For several years past, Mr. Thompson has analyzed
campaign issues for readers of "THE COMMONWEAL.
He is a veteran writer on the subject, having to his
credit a great deal of newspaper experience as well as
several important books. It is a source of gratification
to us that Mr. Thompson will be back at his post dur-
Two initial articles, of which
the second will appear next week, describe the back-
ground and opening phases of the battie. Of course Mr.
Thompson’s views are strictly his own.—The Editors.

not begin before Octo-
ber, when the candidate
—not formerly, but since
1896—takes the stump.
If he is already Presi-
dent, he never does; it is
against tradition.

The reason why the
ante-convention cam-
paign cannot begin until
the year before the elec-
tion is that until then there is no possible way of
knowing along what lines the fight is to be made.
That discovery is made—or has been, prior to
this campaign—in November, two years before
the presidential election. In that year the people
elect a new Congress and a number of governors,
and for the first time express their satisfaction or
displeasure with the sitting President. The study
of these election returns not only shows whether
the country approves him or not, but gives a line
on its reasons. The opposition immediately
shapes its course on the issues so disclosed, and
candidates who do not typify that course are dis-
carded and others come forward. The party in
power corrects its course in the light of the mid-
administration election and prepares its campaign
accordingly.

This has been the history of the past seventy
years. Each time the mid-administration election
of a Congress and state governors has presaged
the presidential result two years later. For ex-
ample, in 1930 the election of Democratic gov-
ernors and a Democratic Congress foretold
President Roosevelt’s landslide in 1932. By this
rule the election of 1934, repeating that land-
slide, should foretell another landslide for him
in 1936. But for the first time since 1864 the mid-
administration barometer is not an infallible in-
dication, because of the unprecedented conditions
resulting from the crisis of 1929-1936. For the
first time the parties were cable to decide their
strategy with certainty from that mid-administra-
tion election, and made no move to plan it until
the election held on November 5 this year.

This resulted from the complete political break
with the past in 1933. All landmarks were oblit-
erated, and the old charts were useless. In the
paralysis of the American economy which was
most spectacularly presented to the imagination,
just as Roosevelt was entering office, by the clos-
ing of the banks, the country looked to Washing-
ton for emergency legislation. It was ready to
trust the captain. It did not become converted

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December 20, 1935

overnight to new economic ideas, but held all
traditional opinions in abeyance while he righted
the ship. is measures were all experimental,
and some worked well and some did not. When
the crisis was over, the emergency past, the coun-
try had leisure to take its bearings and see how
far it had cruised and whether it liked the port
it was making for. This was the moment for
which the politicians of both parties were wait-
ing, in order to get the country’s temper and
determine their line-up accordingly.

Precedent would have made the mid-adminis-
tration election of 1934 the time for taking stock.
In any previous case it would have been. But the
general fecling in the country was that the emer-
gency was not yet over and that the blank check
given the President was still running. That elec-
tion, instead of being the decisive test and the
barometer for 1936, was simply and solely the
continuation of the temporary carte-blanche given
Roosevelt in 1932.

It was so recognized in both parties, and
neither proceeded to form the battle-lines with
the confidence and precision customary in such
cases, or really to form them at all. The parties
marked time. The Republicans, having still no
star to guide them, remained undecided whether
to attack the New Deal or to adopt a middle
course. The much-advertised regional confer-
ences gave more or less encouragement to the
latter idea, but hesitatingly and doubtfully.

Then came the first indication of a possibly
profitable policy for them—and, it follows, for
the Democrats. In Rhode Island a vacant seat
in Congress was filled at a special election, and
the issue was the New Deal. The Republicans
won a sounding victory. About the same time
municipal elections in Connecticut reinforced that
hint. This might indicate only that the East was
turning against the New Deal. So, to get a wider
showdown, the Republicans proposed a similar
trial in the Midwest. There were vacant con-
gressional seats in Ohio and Illinois, and the Re-
publicans urged that they be filled by elections
there as the Rhode Island seat had been filled.
But the Democrats refused the trial, and the
Republicans assumed—doubtless correctly—that
they feared the same result as in Rhode Island.
The moral effect of that refusal was to strengthen
Republican confidence.

However, all there was to go on, so far, was
Rhode Island and, to some extent, Connecticut.
In November there were state elections in New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Kentucky,
and a notable city election in Philadelphia. All
these states had been counted as Democratic next
year by Mr. Farley, and not claimed with any
assurance by the Republicans. New York,
Roosevelt’s state, had gone overwhelmingly not
only for him in 1932 but also necdomanty for

Governor Lehman in 1934, and the most stren-
uous efforts were made by the Democrats to re-
peat those results. New Jersey also had been
Democratic in 1932. Pennsylvania, in 1934, had
abandoned its record as the banner Republican
state and elected a Democratic governor. He
and Senator Guffey, backed by the power of the
federal administration, were building up a power-
ful organization there.

The result in New York was that the Repub-
licans recaptured the State Assembly by a com-
fortable majority. They had made the New Deal
the issue, and Mr. Farley had had the poor judg-
ment to accept it openly as such. The total Demo-
cratic vote was still much larger than the Re-
publican, but had fallen off tremendously from
the relative strength of 1932 and 1934. New
Jersey went Republican by a total vote which
nearly doubled the majority it gave Governor
Hoffman in 1934. Pennsylvania, which a year
ago elected a Democratic governor, went Repub-
lican this year, and the high Democratic hopes of
adding Philadelphia to the cities captured in 1932
were dashed by Mayor Wilson’s election.

In all these elections, as in the Rhode Island
one earlier, the New Deal was either the main
issue Or a very prominent one. In Pennsylvania
it was attacked by the Republican candidate,
though he was only a candidate for a state judge-
ship. In addition, the municipal elections in Ohio
resulted in the capture of mayorships formerly
held by Democrats, and this was taken by the
Republicans as an indication that the Democratic
refusal to allow a congressman to be voted for in
that state was based on a fear that the tide was
turning.

Only in Kentucky was there any comfort for
the Democrats. Governor Chandler was elected
by an immense majority. But the general moral
of the elections was not changed by that incident;
it was, if anything, reinforced. For Kentucky
was the only state in which the New Deal was
not an issue. Not only did the Republican candi-
date, Judge Swope, refuse to attack it or to say
anything about it, but Republican speakers who
were hostile to it were kept out of the state. In
other words, the two proposed Republican policies
were tried out; and wherever the policy of assail-
ing the New Deal was tried there were gains.
In the only state where the middle-of-the-road
policy was tried the Republicans were worse
beaten than usual, even for Kentucky.

Three major suggestions to the politicians of
both parties were made by the election. First,
that the Republican party, which for three years
has appeared dying if not dead, is again alive and
able to fight. Second, that the country regards
the time of emergency and experiment as over,
and is back in its former mood of weighing and
considering governmental acts. Third, that east

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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal

of the Mississippi there is not only a strong dis-
approval of the New Deal, but a growing one.

On this last point it must be remembered that
the change, while not yet actually threatening to
the Democrats, is a change since this time a year
ago, which is a very short time. Last year the
East was as strong for Roosevelt as the West;
the returns of 1934 show it. The question, there-
fore, is whether this change—which undoubtedly
began with the Supreme Court’s decision against
the NRA—will continue to grow at its present
very obvious rate.

What does “the East” mean? Maryland is a
hotbed of anti-New Deal sentiment, and as for
the states north of it, their citizens are usually
moved by about the same considerations as those
in the states that voted this year. So is the Mid-
west as far as the Mississippi and the indications
in Ohio and Illinois, slight as they have been, give
no sign that this year will be an exception.

The Democratic high command are as capable
of sizing up this situation as the Republican, prob-
ably more so. They are, therefore, preparing to
meet a possibly hostile East with a friendly trans-
Mississippi, reinforced by the historically solid
South. The AAA is relied on for that, much
more than any supposed Western radicalism.
From Bryan’s time down it has been repeatedly
proved that reliance on Western radicalism is a
reed, not a staff.

The strategy of 1936, therefore, was defined
on November 5. Kentucky is the unanswerable
proof that the Republicans can win nothing by
pussyfooting, cannot win even such a respectable
vote as would make them a formidable minority
party. They must hold what they won in the
East; gain those Eastern states, like New York,
which are showing discontent but not yet giving
Republican majorities; and, since this is not
enough to elect a President, pick up what Western
states they can. For this purpose they must nom-
inate a Western candidate; and, since the stimu-
lated booms of Colonel Knox and others are scat-
tered by the November returns, the outstanding
candidate in their ranks now is Governor Landon
of Kansas, whose administration has been such as
to result in his being called ‘the inheritor of the
Coolidge tradition.” The political meaning of
that, to be explanatory to the uninitiated, is that
though he is not radical, there is no “taint” of
Hooverism on him.

The Democratic strategy, being of course de-
fensive, needs less space. It is, like all defensive
strategy, to meet the attack, and the election has
shown Democracy at what points to meet it. The
rest is tactics, not strategy; and the tactics will
consist in playing up the AAA even more than
before, and in such congressional proposals—or
enactments—as will best counter Republican tac-
tics. The coming session will be a political session.

SCHOLASTICISM ON THE
PACIFIC COAST
By KURT FRANK REINHARDT

CHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY, it seems, is coming
into its own in this part of the country, and the sev-
eral institutions of higher learning, Catholic and non-
Catholic alike, that are located in the San Francisco Bay
Region, are contributing their share in making the prin-
ciples of the Philosophia Perennis live and breathe. The
completion of the new College of St. Albert the Great,
the future home of the Dominican Fathers now in the
process of construction in the city of Oakland, will add
new vigor to the spirit of scholastic research, and the
daughters of St. Dominic, working at Dominican College
across the bay, are engaged in carrying to new heights
a venerable philosophical and liturgical tradition.

Two years ago, the first Pacific Coast Regional Con-
vention of the American Catholic Philosophical Associ-
ation was held at the University of San Francisco, under
the auspices of Most Reverend Edward J. Hanna, at
that time Archbishop of San Francisco, and Most Rev-
erend John J. Mitty who was then Coadjutor Archbishop
and has in the meantime become Archbishop Hanna’s
successor. The convention had not proven entirely suc-
cessful, partly because the program had attempted to take
in too much territory and because it had staked its hope
and ambition on a broad popular appeal. The realization
of serious defects in the preparations, the offerings and
the proceedings led afterward to the formation of a stand-
ing association of priests and laymen under the presidency
of Reverend Charles Baschab, professor of philosophy at
Dominican College, San Raffael, California. This group
of approximately thirty men, actively engaged in the teach-
ing of philosophy or related professional work, were to
meet on the third Monday of each month to listen to a
specially prepared paper on scholastic philosophy and to
discuss the problems involved.

During the first year of its activity, the Philosophical
Association attempted to clear the ground for a fruitful
cooperation of its members, the topics of discussion were
picked rather at random, and no hard and fast rule was
adhered to. At the end of the first year, however, a
committee was appointed to work out a well-integrated
program for future research. The result was a definite
plan which called for a series of sixteen papers dealing
generally with the problem of knowledge, developed from
the viewpoint of psychology. Among others, the follow-
ing topics are to be dealt with: the Nature of Life
(Mechanism, Vitalism, Scholasticism); the Nature and
Genesis of Sense; the Nature and Genesis of Intellect;
the Genesis of Fundamental Ideas; Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, and Sense Knowledge; Scholastic Theories of In-
tellectual Knowledge; Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Bergson
and Intellectual Knowledge; Neo-Realism, Critical Real-
ism and Knowledge.

In addition to this internal cooperative effort of the
association, special attention was given to a careful prepa-
ration of the Second Pacific Coast Regional Convention
of the national association which was held on October 25

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

and 26 of this year under the auspices of Archbishop
Mitty at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. ‘“Schol-
astic Ethics and Modern Society” had been chosen as a
general topic, and papers were presented on “Ethics and
Economics,” “Ethics and the State,” “Ethics and Edu-
cation,” “Ethics and the Family,” “Ethics and Art,”
“Ethics and Religion.” There were four major sessions
in all, each consisting of the presentation of one or more
papers and formal as well as informal discussions from
the floor. The Friday morning session was preceded by
a solemn High Mass (Coram Pontifice) in St. Mary’s
Cathedral, Gregorian music being provided by the Schola
Cantorum under the direction of Reverend Edgar Boyle,
Archdiocesan Director of Music, and a sermon suited to
the occasion being preached by Monsignor Ramm of St.
Mary’s Cathedral. At the concluding luncheon Brother
Leo, the former chancellor of St. Mary’s College, pro-
fessor of English literature and most popular speaker in
the West, addressed a large audience on “The Sleeping
Beauty.” His speech will not be forgotten because it
symbolized and illustrated the theme and objective of the
convention by giving emphasis to the vitality of philo-
sophic thought and by combining simplicity with supreme
lucidity and profundity. It might be worth mentioning
that some individual representatives of the leading secu-
lar universities attended and took an active part in dis-
cussions from the floor.

Communications
A MARTYR FOR THE FAITH
Komoka, Canada.

O the Editor: On March 7, 1935, Exarch Leonid

Theodoroff, head of the Russian Catholic Church
and Protonotary Apostolic, died in exile near Vyatka,
U.S.S.R. He had embraced Catholicism while studying
in the Orthodox Theological Academy in St. Petersburg.
Later he completed his theological studies at the Gre-
gorian University in Rome and became a monk. Return-
ing home, he was soon exiled by the imperial government
to Tobolsk—for spreading Catholicism. Early in 1917,
Father Theodoroff was named Exarch of Russia by
Metropolitan Andrew Sheptitsky, Archbishop of Lviv.
(Metropolitan Andrew had been empowered previously
by Pope Pius X with practically patriarchal jurisdiction. )
After the 1917 Revolution, Monsignor Leonid was able
to exercise a fruitful apostolate for some time, but in 1923
the Soviet government arrested him, along with Mon-
signor Cieplak and Monsignor Budkievich, and con-
demned him to prison for ten years. ‘This term was spent
first in Moscow, then on the Solovetsky Islands, and,
finally, at Vyatka.

On March 24, 1923, at the trial of Archbishop Cieplak
in Moscow, Exarch Leonid spoke as follows to his Bolshe-
vist judge:

“My whole life has been based on two principles: love
of the Roman Church with which I am united, and love
of my country, which I venerate. If I do not care whether

I am sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment or to be shot, it

is not because I am a fanatic. Sometimes the innocent
must be killed in order that the guilty may not escape.
Since I became a Catholic, my one object has been to re-
concile my country with that Church, which I believe to
be the only true Church. Under the old government
[czarist] I was imprisoned in Tobolsk for two and a half
years. . . . If we believe Holy Scripture, that all power
comes from God, then as a Catholic priest I must admit
that this your power also comes from God and perhaps
it is sent us as a punishment for our sins. . . . Authority is
one thing, atheistic propaganda quite another. I have al-
ways fought atheism and proved its impotence. I have
often spoken at meetings in Petrograd where politics was
excluded, and no one present could be found to accuse me
of having even touched on politics in my speeches.”

When Latin Catholics pray after non-parochial low
Mass for Russia, let them of their generosity remember
this confessor of Christ: that God may grant rest, re-
freshment and the light of His countenance to His servant
Leonid where there is no suffering, sorrow or sighing, but
everlasting peace. “In paradisum deducant be Angeli;
in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres, et perducant te
in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem’’!

On March 24, 1927, Pope Pius XI said:

“Every day, without exception, every day now for a
long time, immediately after waking, we remember Russia
at Holy Mass—all its priests, all its confessors, and all its
faithful, Catholic and non-Catholic. At every Eucharist
we penetrate Russia with our Lord Jesus Christ. Every
day He travels with us from Minsk to Vladivostok, from
Tiflis to the Solovetsky Islands. We bless, we pray, we
hope together, and above all we suffer with them—with
them all.”

The Russian Byzantine Catholic Church dates its be-
ginning only from the 1905 ukase of liberty. Who can tell
the future? How inappropriate one petition of the Byzan-
tine Anaphora must seem to Russian priests: “We offer
Thee this spiritual worship . . . for our pious and Christ-
loving rulers, for their court and army. Grant them,
Lord, a quiet reign, that we, too, in their peace, may lead
a calm and tranquil life in all devotion and honesty.”

M. Gray.

MEXICO’S WAR ON RELIGION
Spring Hill, Ala.

O the Editor: Your editorial of October 25 on
“Mexico’s War on Religion” was a convincing con-
firmation of its title, especially its citations from the re-
port issued by the deputation of the American Committee
on Religious Rights ; but the conclusions of both seem lame
and ineffective. Diffusion of the facts irrefutably sus-
taining their judgment, that the Mexican government “is
seeking the abelition of religion itself in substantially the
same way as the Soviet government of Russia,” is most
commendable; but when the American public have re-
ceived this further enlightenment on an already obvious

fact, what will you have them to do about it?

At this moment Mexico’s children are being atheized,
its church, clergy and Catholic laity, robbed, banned, jailed

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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal

—

and filched of all liberty, and Christ and all Christian
sanctities are being made anathema, by all the forces of
this government in its war against God. Cardenas has
outstripped even Calles in conscience-catching and religion-
killing decrees and devices, and after their issue our Mr.
Daniels took occasion to eulogize Cardenas before his
fellow ambassadors and the diplomatic corps as a model of
courage, ability and social progressiveness. No wonder
the Mexican government could then afford to scoff at the
united Bishops’ petition for fundamental liberty. And
President Roosevelt’s equally absolute rejection of the de-
mand of the Knights of Columbus and of countless other
citizens that he permit congressional inquiry into denial
of American rights in Mexico and demand justice in the
matter, would confirm the opinion that our Ambassador’s
frequent utterances and gestures in favor of Mexico’s
rulers and their persecuting policy were made and sus-
tained by his government’s sanction. -

For us, then, it is more than a question of religious per-
secution in a foreign country. I have shown and proved
by incontrovertible documents in the little book “No God
Next Door” that for over a century our administrations
have, by armed force and by diplomatic and financial and
other influences, put and kept in power the persecuting
minorities in Mexico. I have shown, too, that the Supreme
Masonic Councils in Mexico and the Supreme Council of
the Scottish Rite 33rd degree in Washington have power-
fully furthered or directed the operation; and it is sig-
nificant that just before President Roosevelt’s blank re-
fusal to apply to Mexico the action of himself and his
predecessors against persecution elsewhere, he, as a 32nd
degree Mason, initiated his two sons into Masonry, the
first achievement of the kind by an American President.

Whatever significance this may have portended, it is
clearly a civic American duty to repair the injustices we
have inflicted or are inflicting upon Mexico and direct our
government’s servants to that end. This is a religious
duty in as much as it is binding on the conscience of every
citizen by vote and influence to direct his representatives
aright; and it is only more incumbent on Catholics in so
far as Catholics happen in this instance to be the sufferers.
How we may fulfil this duty I have tried to show in
readable as well as reachable form in “No God Next
Door,” a 200-page book, which Hirten of New York
has issued at $.25 and at large discount for quantities.
A large first edition has been sold. Its still wider circula-
tion by pastors and societies would demand more urgent
commendation than a pamphlet, however valuable in its
facts, that defers the remedial action to a distant and
doubtful tribunal.

Meanwhile, the National Board of the Knights of Co-
lumbus have set an inspiring example of courageous civic
action to American citizens of all classes, whether lay or
cleric. The similarly American and most practically
helpful action of the entire hierarchy should silence all
dissentious whisperings and ensure a united citizenry reso-
lute to exact, by demand and protest and voice and vote,
the fullness of American justice in all our dealings with
the suffering nation at our doors.

Rev. Kenny, S.J.

VENERABLE SHEPHERD OF ALASKA APPEALS
New York, N. Y.

O the Editor: This Christmas the Marquette League

for Catholic Indian Missions, with offices at 105
East 22nd Street, New York City, is making a special
appeal in behalf of the Alaskan Missions in response to
the touching plea of His Excellency Most Reverend
Joseph R. Crimont, S.J., D.D., Vicar-Apostolic of
Alaska. Bishop Crimont writes:

“As I look at you closely, my friends, I discover, fur-
rowing your brows, the still bleeding wounds of the worst
economic depression. In such hard circumstances, how
can I be justified in making a special appeal of my own?
Ah, friends, necessity has no law. Here is my pleading:

“We have four boarding-schools with 500 Eskimo and
Indian children to support. Last year there was serious
question of closing two of these schools; and as for the
surviving ones, of sending home the greater part of the
pupils, because means were lacking to further feed and
clothe them. But how could we cast out on the streets
(i.e., the bleak Alaskan tundra) these helpless innocent.
children to starve body, mind and soul, and become the
sure prey of the wolves of earth and hell?

“At Holy Cross, our main boarding-school, a new
house needs to be built for our little tots, if we do not
want to rise one sad morning, and behold with horror
that these precious little things have been crushed out of
existence by the fallen roof and walls and buried under
the ruins of the poor, rotten structure wherein they are
housed.

“Above all, it is daily bread that we want for the chil-
dren of our four boarding-schools. We have resolved
not to cut down their number, as for the greater part of
them, there is no home to be found except that of our
schools.

“Who will not find it in his or her heart to come to
our assistance and experience the blessedness of giving
to Christ in His children?”

I should like very much to have our Catholic people
give the venerable and saintly Bishop of Alaska a sub-
stantial sum for the needs of his many missions—enough,
at least, to buy food and fuel for his four boarding-schools
for the coming winter.

Bishop Crimont is now seventy-eight years of age, and
has spent forty-two years in the missions of Alaska. He
has just completed a visitation of all the missions in his
vast vicariate, which covers over 600,000 square miles.
Our Holy Father has pronounced it the poorest and
hardest mission country in all the world.

In return for their charity in answer to the heroic and
zealous Bishop’s appeal, the Christ Child will reward
them abundantly with spiritual and temporal blessings.

Rr. Rev. Msocr. WitiiaM J. Fiynn, P.A.,
Director General, Marquette League.

We regret that in last week's issue, page 178, the Mas-
ter Record used in Electrical Transcription was erroneous-

ly spelled Moser Record—The Editors.

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

Seoen Days’ Suroey

The Church.—The National Broadcasting Company
has announced Christmas broadcasts from two famous
European abbeys. On Christmas Eve the midnight ser-
vices at the Buckfast Benedictine Abbey at Devon, En-
gland, will be heard on American radio sets from 5:15 to
5:30 p. m., Eastern Standard Time; from 6:15 to 6:30,
midnight services from the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes,
France, will be broadcast. * * * The Catholic Times of
London confirms the discovery of a small fragment of a
papyrus of the first half of the second century, containing
a Greek text of a portion of Saint John’s Gospel, which
is believed to be the earliest extant text of the Gospel.
* * * The Lactario of Coimbra, Portugal, recently cele-
brated its twelfth anniversary. This group of Catholic
medical students distributes more than 2,000 gallons of
milk annually to the poor, conducts a free clinic for
physiotherapy and X-ray treatment and a pharmacy which
is supplied with free medicine. They also provide food,
clothing, fuel and other necessities. * * * The Dramatic
Union of Our Lady of Lourdes of New York has under-
taken to perform each month for the benefit of subscribers
a good play “compatible with Catholic principles and
ideals and the canons of good taste.” * * * The S.S. Albert-
ville which sailed from Antwerp some weeks ago carried
77 Catholic missionaries to the Belgian Congo, 50 of
them priests. * * * The Journal of the American Medical
Association has commended for physicians and nurses a
pamphlet entitled “Baptism of the Infant and the Fetus,”
by Reverend John Bowen and published by M. J. Knippel
of Dubuque, Iowa. * * * On a visit to his birthplace the
Most Reverend Marcelino Olaecha, S.S., the new Bishop
of Pamplona, Spain, received a tremendous ovation from
the factory workers. The son of a mechanic, Bishop
Olaecha has devoted his life to the sons of laborers and is
known as the “Labor Bishop.” His congregation, the
Salesians, have 50 houses in Spain, where in the last few
years they have educated more than 300,000 sons of the
workers. * * * Reports from the Philippines indicate that
there is still a dire shortage of priests. Some parishes with
a single priest comprise from 20,000 to 50,000 people.

The Nation.—The United States capital spilled over
into Baltimore when Secretary Ickes could not find office
space in Washington for new bureaus. * * * The Federal
Housing Administration announced that its business had
passed $500,000,000. It predicted that next year 175,000
new homes would be built. Regularly there are more
than 1,000,000 marriages a year in the country, and just
before the depression one new home was constructed for
about every three marriages. Senator Wagner is said to
have a bill ready to present in January which would pro-
vide an appropriation of $800,000,000 for federal housing
during the new year. * * * In New Jersey the State
Cleaning and Dyeing Board took an action radically

opposed to the most publicized present actions of business

when it voluntarily set up a most inclusive “NRA” code
to govern the local industry. * * * President Green of the
A. F. of L. refused a queer invitation of John L. Lewis
to join the group of industrial unionists who are trying to
make industrial unionism dominant over craft. The
horizontal-vertical contest continues, and most observers
concede the vertical forces headed by Lewis the best
chance of victory. This would make John L. Lewis one
of the very few most powerful men in the country. * * *
In Georgia a Superior Court declared unconstitutional
the state anti-sedition law of 1866 by which Angelo
Herndon, Negro Communist organizer, was held under
arrest. His case has been publicized as nearly like the
Scottsboro, Mooney and Sacco-Vanzetti cases as radicals
have been able to make it. * * * When the United States
Treasury made no bids for silver two days in a row, the
great silver markets had to cease giving quotations on the
white metal. The effort of China to join the “sterling
bloc” is said to have changed the Treasury policy. * * * The
second anniversary of the repeal of prohibition occurred on
December 5. Only eight states are now dry, although a
new dry movement is growing more powerful. Con-
sumption of alcoholics in 1934 was 70 percent as great
as in 1917. * * * On December 14 the Literary Digest poll
stood 274,830 or 42.76 percent for the New Deal and
367,881 or 57.24 percent against it. Seven states, all
Southern, favored, while nineteen were against it. The
farm belt, strangely, was running 3 to 2 in opposition.

The Wide World.—On December 4, Premier Laval
communicated to the Italian government a proposal to
effect a compromise between Italy and Ethiopia. It was
indicated that Italy was slated to acquire substantial por-
tions of territory, while Emperor Haile Selassie’s “desire”
for a port was to be satisfied by the cession of a strip of
land ending near the town of Assab. The terms of the
proposal evidently secured the endorsement of Sir Samuel
Hoare; and the press stated that Paris, annoyed by Musso-
lini’s truculent attitude, was prepared to stand solidly
behind Britain in case efforts to effect a peaceful settle-
ment of the war in Africa failed. Details of the plan
were made public on December 9, and it was obvious that
Italian demands had made a deeper impression than pre-
viously. Indignation was rife in London, and there were
rumors that the House of Commons would oppose the
Hoare-Laval step in a stormy session and that Sir Anthony
Eden would resign. His Majesty’s government was said
to have accepted the proposed peace terms, with certain
modifications. More optimism was reported from Italy,
but the alternative to acceptance of the offer remained the
invocation of sanctions against the sale of oil to Italy.
The tightening of all regulations affecting commerce and
money, as well as a still more rigid censorship of the

news, revealed the tension in I] Duce’s own back yard. .

* * * The principal military episode was the bombing of

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Dessye on December 6, with a resultant toll of killed and
wounded. A field hospital conducted under American
auspices was the target for some of the firing, though the
inmates had previously been removed. ‘The headquarters
of the Emperor are at Dessye, but he escaped injury.
Skirmishing was also reported from the southern front.
*** The London Naval Conference opened on Decem-
ber 9, after the delegates had been informed of a Japanese
demand for full parity. A statement incorporating the
Nipponese stand was said by the Associated Press to have
been presented to the British Admiralty. When the Con-
ference met, Mr. Norman H. Davis read a letter from
President Roosevelt, suggesting that a reduction of 20
percent in the naval armament of the world be sought.
Any reduction, the President opined, would be better than
none at all; but at least the existing treaties ought to be
renewed. ‘This stand was supported in part by Mr.
Stanley Baldwin, who advocated in particular the drastic
curtailment of submarine warfare. * * * Discussion of the
fate of North China continued. On December 7, re-
ports indicated that a compromise had been effected, under
which the sovereignty of Nanking would be recognized
in a measure. Later on some Chinese resistance to the
proposal was indicated. Both the British and the United
States governments protested in statements against Jap-
anese policy in North China. * * * ‘The Laval government
was saved from defeat, by a vote of 351 to 219, when
Jean Ybarnegaray, member of the Croix de Feu, moved
that all political groups be disarmed. This conciliatory
gesture stirred the Chambre, which adopted the laws
effecting disarmament as proposed by M. Laval. * * *-In
a speech at Nuremberg, Chancellor Hitler opposed the
views concerning the beneficence of capitalism which had
been voiced some weeks previous by Dr. Hjalmar Schacht.
He did not, however, mention Schacht by name, and the
general assumption was that Hitler was merely trying to
placate radical groups.

* * *

Industrial Cooperation.—In Washington, on Decem-
ber 9, Coordinator for Industrial Cooperation George L.
Berry, under the most trying circumstances, opened an
industry-labor round table conference which had been
planned to give a program for reemployment and stabili-
zation of prosperity to take the place of the defunct NRA.
Only four days previously, the National Association of
Manufacturers, which represents 75,000 business enter-
prises estimated to employ from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000
workers, had adopted a militant program pledging the
members to political action to defeat “President Roose-
velt’s new economic order.”” Major Berry planned to
conduct the general conference quickly through discussion
of thirteen topics selected from the innumerable ones sug-
gested. He then hoped that the conference would break
up into forty-eight industrial groups and thirteen labor
groups and that each of these groups would select a rep-
resentative to become a member of a new Industrial
Council. The council would be a permanent organ to
accomplish the purposes of cooperative effort for better-
ment. ‘The group meetings would also clarify sugges-

tions about what should be done. But opposition to the
coordinator’s idea developed powerfully even before the
conference, as reported last week, and only about 2,000
of the 5,200 invitations to the conference were accepted
at all. Then, on the first day, when Major Berry tried
to adjourn the general meeting into group conferences,
such violent opposition developed that a large police squad
had to come in and keep the peace. It was at first be-
lieved that the whole conference was ruined completely,
but on succeeding days some order and clarification came
about. All 109 national and international unions of the
A. F. of L. supported the proposal for an Industrial
Council. A sufficient number of industrial groups imme-
diately chose members for the council, or indicated that
they would refer back to the businesses they represented
for members, to keep things going. Other groups, refusing
to designate members, still contributed plans for the relief
of unemployment and economic recovery. But the new
Industrial Council still must face great hostility from
those business men who heartily dislike the whole concep-
tion of the government “interfering” in business.

The Berlin Olympics.—The function of the Amateur
Athletic Union, which convened in New York on De-
cember 6, is to certify the amateur standing of American
athletes. It was called upon, however, to consider a num-
ber of resolutions concerning participation in the 1936
Berlin games. Previously Mr. Avery Brundage had
pointedly declared that regardless of the decision reached
by the A.A.U., a team would be sent by the American
Olympic Committee. The first resolution urged athletes
to refrain from making the trip, and requested the Amer-
ican Olympic Committee to convene a meeting “for the
purpose of reconsidering the question of American par-
ticipation in the games.” An executive committee vote
on this resolution ended in a tie. The delegates then
agreed, by a slender majority, to table this solution of the
problem. Another proposal, to send an_ investigating
commission of three to Germany for the purpose of secur-
ing data about the status of the Olympic contestants, was
beaten by the slender majority of 2% out of 114 votes,
the deciding factor being the strength of fifteen organiza-
tions allied with the A.A.U. ‘Thereupon the convention
adopted viva voce a resolution offered by Gustavus T.
Kirby, which recognized that “conditions still exist in
Germany” which render enforcement of the Olympic code
difficult, urged that the authorities “investigate with vigi-
lance” the situation obtaining, and stated that “it is the
hope and desire of the A.A.U. that America be repre-
sented in all Olympic contests.” The future tactics of the
non-participation group were indicated when Judge Jere-
miah T. Mahoney, stressing his dissatisfaction with the
Kirby resolution, withdrew as a candidate for the presi-
dency of the A.A.U. and was followed by all others on
his slate. Those who favored the solution reached there-
upon elected Avery Brundage to succeed Judge Mahoney.
Leaders of the “Move-the-Olympics” movement averred
their intention of pushing ahead with plans and propa-
ganda, while it became obvious that to find money to
finance the trek across the water might be difficult.

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216

The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

Decent Procedure. — At a special convocation over
which Cardinal Archbishop Mundelein presided, Notre
Dame University conferred the honorary degree of Doc-
tor of Laws on President Roosevelt and on Sefior Carlos
P. Romulo, Philippine editor and educator. The special
convocation, third in the history of the university, was
called to celebrate the independence of the new Common-
wealth of the Philippines. Cardinal Mundelein spoke
approvingly of the President and his social policies and
praised his “indomitable persevering courage.” The
President spoke of the due regard for fundamental human
rights expressed by the Philippine people in their new
Constitution and emphasized that supreme among these
were the rights of freedom of education and freedom of
religious worship. The Reverend John F. O’Hara, presi-
dent of Notre Dame University, in referring to the
Philippines said, “If it be not unique, it is at least remark-
able for a nation to take the final step to sovereignty with-
out bloodshed, and it is indeed eminently fitting that
when we mark this event and bless the spirit behind it,
we have an opportunity to thank personally the statesman
most responsible for it, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Mr. Romulo dwelt on the determination of his people to
maintain their freedom without calling on the people of
the United States to shed their blood to defend the Fili-
pino people, and he described, from a Catholic point of
view, their social and economic aspirations.

Senate of the Pope.—The consistory of December 16
was to be one of the most remarkable in history for the
number of cardinals created (the most regular business
of consistories). Leo X’s consistory of 1517 produced
the greatest number of new cardinals, 31; in modern times
only the 1911 consistory of Pius X has created as many
as the present one. Before December 16 there were 49
cardinals, 23 Italian and 26 non-Italian. There were
also two names held in pectore, that is, two persons
selected as cardinals but not publicly appointed, since the
consistory of 1933. Now the College of Cardinals has
69 members, 37 Italian and 32 non-Italian. Of the
twenty new members, four are diplomats, six officers in
the Roman congregations and court, three high Vatican
dignitaries, one Jesuit, one rector of the Catholic Insti-
tute of Paris, and five members of the episcopate, one of
them being Patriarch of Antioch, a bishop in the Syrian
The word consistory is derived from consistorium,
the Latin designation of the sacred council of the Roman
emperors before the Christianization of the empire. The
historical root of the present consistories is in the old
Roman presbyterium of the deacons in charge of ecclesi-
astical temporalities, the priests, or tituli, of the principal
churches in Rome, and (at least by the eighth century)
the bishops of near dioceses. The Popes conferred with
the presbyterium as they now confer with the cardinals in
consistories. ‘There are still cardinal deacons, priests and
bishops. In modern times there have been three sorts of
consistories: secret, like the present one, to which only
cardinals are admitted ; semi-public, which include certain
bishops who are in Italy as well as the available cardinals ;
and public, which can include any sort of ecclesiastic or

lay person. The first type is the most common now and
has the most functions. ‘The others are held chiefly in
connection with the beatification of saints.

William D. Guthrie.—The death, on December 8, of
Mr. William Dameron Guthrie, removes from the bar
of New York and the nation one of its most illustrious
members. Perhaps none of the many cases pleaded by
him attracted the attention accorded the Supreme Court
hearings on the Oregon School Law, which ended when
the highest tribunal in the land declared in part: “The
fundamental theory of liberty upon which all govern-
ments in this Union repose excludes any general power
of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to
accept instruction from public teachers only. The child
is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture
him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with
the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for addi-
tional obligations.” Mr. Guthrie also drew up for the
Ordinary of the Archdiocese of New York a voluminous
report on the religious laws of Mexico, which he declared
to be in conflict with the principles of justice and of inter-
national law. More recently he was among the chief
antagonists of the proposed Child Labor Amendment to
the Federal Constitution, and was instrumental in con-
vincing the Assembly of the State of New York to vote
against ratification. Mr. Guthrie was likewise one of
the stanchest enemies of the Eighteenth Amendment, and
a resolute defender of the good name of the legal pro-
fession. Born in San Francisco, February 3, 1859, Mr.
Guthrie was educated in New York and received admis-
sion to the bar in 1884. Gradually he built up a secure
reputation as a constitutional lawyer. Numerous honors
were conferred upon him, including several Papal decora-
tions. The funeral Mass was sung in St. Patrick’s Cathe-
dral, Cardinal Hayes giving the absolution.

Catholics of the Right.—Evidence of the extent to
which France is torn today between the Fascist National
Front of the Right and the anti-Fascist, Socialist-
Communist Popular Front of the Left appears in several
places in the current issue of the alert weekly, Sept. The
“prayer for France” which opens the issue is an ardent
plea for peace within its borders as well as peace with
other nations. Excerpts from a recent speech by Father
Gillet, Master General of the Dominican Order, are also
quoted to the effect that what is needed in France is a
government that really governs. But the reflections of
P. Henry Simon on the struggle since the war between
French radicals and conservatives on the issues of nation-
alism, capitalism and parliamentarianism may be suscepti-
ble of far wider applications, “. . . Considerabie study is
not needed to point out that on these three points the
principal Catholic forces—please note that I do not say
the Church—have acted with the Right. . . . It must be
admitted that in their most official organizations and in
their great majority French Catholics think, feel and vote
with the Right. This is not the place to reproach them on
the question of principle; I wish even to commend them
for it in so far as there are virtues of the Right which

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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal

217

are eminently honorable: family spirit, patriotism, religious
fidelity; but still it is necessary to call to their attention
the sins of their party and to urge them to dissociate
themselves from them. . . . Who do not recognize that
the people exist? Why all those who, confusedly calling
‘traditions’ the abuses by which they profit and the privi-
leges that they do not wish to relinquish, have kept back
for a hundred years, by a petty rearguard action, under
the pretext of wisdom and fidelity, the progress of liberty
and justice. . . . Among these defenders of a false order
must we always see so many professed Catholics?”

A Program for Puerto Rico.—El Mundo, a leading
Spanish-language daily in San Juan, is now publishing
serially a report prepared by Father McGowan at the
request of the Administrative Committee of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference. ‘The Church and Recon-
struction in Puerto Rico” is a remarkably comprehensive
study of the “huge and terrible poverty in both city and
country” there. The root of the trouble is diagnosed as
being Puerto Rican “individualism” and in competi-
tion with the “individualism” of continental United
States it has “utterly and dramatically failed.” A re-
ligious revival is needed since much of the difficulty can
be traced to the attempt to live in a “double culture,
individualist and Catholic.” ‘To this end religious educa-
tion must be inaugurated in the schools, scholastic philoso-
phy in the university. Government funds must be used
chiefly for economic reconstruction and federal aid must
be extended to 1940. A permanent technical board should
be set up to bring about the application of the principles
of agrobiology. Production almost solely for export must
give way to production chiefly for domestic use. Owner-
ship of the sugar industry, “the giant of Puerto Rico,”
should be so divided among individuals, cooperatives and
the state as to effect the greatest welfare for the people
in the industry and the people of Puerto Rico. Within
the next ten years 100,000 families should be placed on
small farms devoted to everything but sugar and citrus
fruits. Federal social insurance, slum clearance and low-
cost housing should be extended to Puerto Rico as well
as rural electrification. Distribution of ownership should
be effected by binding wage and crop contracts containing
profit-sharing and stock-acquiring agreements.

* * *

Farmers Get Attention.—In agricultural affairs, it is
conceded by Republicans as well as by Democrats, the
present administration has been so attractive to its con-
stituents that it sits solidly in nearly all farm areas. It
has been rather authoritatively hinted that the next Con-
gress will be asked to pass some further farm laws, prob-
ably the Bankhead Farm Tenant bill first. Also, the
administration is ready to introduce substitutes for the
key AAA law if that is thrown out by the Supreme Court.
The second day of argument on the constitutionality of
the AAA and the Bankhead Cotton Control Act was
dramatically interrupted on December 10 when Solicitor
General Stanley Reed collapsed. He had been under-
going questioning by the Justices which boded no good

for the laws and, apparently overworked in his prepara-
tions, had to be excused when he almost fainted. Be-
fore the American Farm Bureau Federation in Chicago
on December 9, President Roosevelt had delivered a ma-
jor speech. He told that his administration had met the
double problem of low prices for farm products and enor-
mous surpluses. “Parity” has temporarily been the guide.
He has tried to exert the “organized power of the na-
tion” (as differentiated from the forty-eight states) in
favor of farmers and little folk with as much helpfulness
and liberality as it had been exerted for banks and railroads.
In his term the relative purchasing power of farmers has
risen from 50 to 90. With this, farm income has gone up
$3,000,000,000. Because of the beneficial effects of farm
prosperity on the rest of the country, “the farm program
instead of burdening consumers as a group has actually
given them net benefits.” The President hit out at food
middlemen and decried violent fluctuations in farm com-
modity prices. He said: “We are regaining a more fair
balance among the groups that constitute the nation and
we must look to the factors that will make that balance
stable.” He then vigorously applauded the efforts of the
nation’s “agencies of government” to give the country a
better life.

Pathways to Recovery.—The National Association of
Manufacturers adopted an anti-New Deal “Platform for
American Industry” at a session in New York, Decem-
ber 5. This statement branded as “reactionary and coer-
cive” the administration’s opposition to the “progressive
American system of voluntary and individual enterprise”
guaranteed by the Constitution. As impediments to re-
covery it cited attempts to regulate and control produc-
tion, regulation of financing, hours and wages, and rela-
tions between worker and employer. It called for
curtailment of government expenditures, maintenance of
a fixed gold standard, limitation of government super-
vision of banking and credit. The American system of
free competition was said to offer the greatest promise
of recovery and social progress. In reply William Green
of the American Federation of Labor declared the plat-
form was “entirely negative in character.” He quoted
Doctor Moulton of the Brookings Institution to the
effect that “the primary need of the economic system is
the broad diffusion of the total income among the masses.
of the people.” Secretary Wallace reiterated his advo-
cacy of larger imports as the only means of selling Amer-
ican farm surpluses, together with “a domestic policy
that maintains a distribution of the national income which
will enable many potential buyers to become actual
buyers.” Somewhere between these two camps, opposed
both to “bureaucratic” and “monopoly” control, was
candidate William E. Borah, who also cited the impartial
findings of the Brookings Institution and declared that
the way out was the abolishing of monopolies, economic
dictatorships and arbitrary prices. Meanwhile, despite
convincing studies proving the impracticality of their
plan, the Townsendites continued their quiet but effective
campaign to muster truly impressive strength for the
Seventy-fifth Congress next month.

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218

The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

The Play

By GRENVILLE VERNON

Eva Le Gallienne

HE VANISHING of Miss Eva La Gallienne’s

Civic Repertory Company has been one of the sad-
dest things in the history of the American theatre. Un-
like the Washington Square Players, which underwent a
rebirth in the inauguration of the Theatre Guild, or the
Provincetown Theatre, which disintegrated when _ its
vitality had passed, Miss Le Gallienne’s creation passed
away at the very height of its power and usefulness. The
Civic Repertory Company was the most gallant venture
ever undertaken in the New York theatre, the only one
which ever dared really to carry out the repertory system,
and in addition to present thé classics of the world’s
repertory at prices within the reach of everyone. Its
failure did not lie in the non-response of the public; the
public rarely failed to fill the house. The reason was
that the cost of giving plays as well as the Civic company
gave them was too great, and a Maecenas was necessary.
While that Maecenas lasted the Fourteenth Street The-
atre was a Mecca to all who loved what was best in the
theatre, but when the depression forced him to discon-
tinue his support, deficits could no longer be met and
Miss Le Gallienne had to turn northward to Broadway,
and later to the road. Yet deprived though she has been
of a permanent home Miss Le Gallienne has never for a
moment wavered in her artistic integrity; she has given
only the best, and in the best manner she is able to
give it. Last year in her New York engagement we had
“L’Aiglon” and “Hedda Gabler”; this year we have
“Rosmersholm,” “Camille” and Quintero’s two plays,
“A Sunny Morning” and “The Women Have Their
Way.” The last three she has given often before, but
“Rosmersholm” is a newcomer to her repertory.

The character of Rebecca West has for some strange
reason always fascinated actresses, and even today it pos-
sesses moments of power and intellectual subtlety. But
the play itself has worn badly. The two first acts with
their vague discussions of long-past struggles of liberal
against conservative are today unmitigated bores, and
even the last act, when the drama becomes more personal,
is by no means as thrilling as it was in late Victorian
times. Its morbidity and its glorification of suicide are
today only rather amusing proofs that Ibsen, the realist,
was often but a romanticist gone giddy in the head.
What is interesting in the play today is its admirable con-
struction, and we marvel as we watch every joint fit
inevitably into the next. There are no waste speeches,
no waste movements—but after all that is simply saying
that it is a play by Ibsen. As a model for playwrights
“Rosmersholm” is excellent to watch, but the general
audience finds little meat in it in this year 1935. Need-
less to say Miss Le Gallienne threw herself into the part
of Rebecca with all her vigor and intelligence. She gave
a beautifully articulated and exquisitely subtle perform-

ance, and there were moments when she even made us
sympathize with Rebecca’s tortured soul. Yet despite
her efforts the final result was singularly futile, the fault
of the play, not the actress. Miss Le Gallienne’s support
was not always as happy as it has been sometimes in the
past. Donald Cameron was earnest enough as Rosmer,
but Hugh Buckler was a very actorish Ulric Brendel,
and Averell Harris rather colorless as Professor Kroll.
“Rosmersholm” is not one of Miss Le Gallienne’s more
successful productions, (At the Shubert Theatre.)

May Wine

66 AY WINE?” is in the tradition of Viennese

operetta, even though its music is by Sigmund
Romberg, its book by Frank Mandel based on a story by
Wallace Smith and Eric Von Stroheim, and its lyrics
by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is also in most respects a
very charming example of that tradition. It has charm,
delicacy of sentiment, is practically void of vulgarity,
though there are one or two equivocal situations, the
music is gracious if undistinguished, and most of the sing-
ing excellent. It tells the story of an impecunious Baroness
who marries a young professor for his money, or rather
is married to him by an equally impecunious Baron, whom
she thinks she loves, but who loves the money she will get
from her husband better than he loves her. In the end she
realizes that she has learned to love her husband, and sends
the Baron away. This is a story often told in operetta,
but Mr. Mandel has given it some novel twists and
situations, and Mr. Romberg had clothed it in melodies,
heard perhaps before, but always heard gratefully. And
since it is the only operetta in town, it ought to do well.

It ought to do particularly well because of the way it
is given. Nancy McCord is charming to look at and
sings well as the Baroness, Walter Woolf King has dis-
tinction and a voice as the Baron, and Walter Slezak,
even though he has no voice, makes the Professor pathetic
and yet sympathetic. ‘There are other excellent artists,
including Patricia Calvert, the always delightful Leo
Carroll, this time in a part quite unworthy of his powers,
and Robert C. Fischer in a part which he makes the most
of. There is no chorus, but a large cast. The settings
by Raymond Sovey are excellent. The success of “May
Wine” will depend on whether or not New York audi-
ences still respond to a musical play which has for a basis
neither jazz nor horse-play. The success in the legitimate
theatre of such plays as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Re-
member the Day” are at least of good omen. ‘These
plays have proved that quiet charm can still enthrall a
New York audience. Indeed such plays have brought
back to the theatre an audience that was rapidly being
driven to the movies by the triumph of crude realism on
the speaking stage. Let us hope that “May Wine” will lend
its aid in the musical field. (At the St. James Theatre.)

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December 20, 1935 The Commonweal 219

—

The Screen

By JAMES P. CUNNINGHAM

Tale of Two Cities
HE BEAUTY of Dickens’s immortal romance in-

tensifies, its power becomes more potent, in the
transition from the printed page to the more expansive
medium of the screen.

Historical authenticity following the author’s interpre-
tation of the French Revolution, climaxed in the storming
of the Bastille and the tragic death of Sydney Carton
(Ronald Colman), together with a most remarkable per-
formance by an illustrious assemblage, fully reflect the
sincere effort that evidently was expended to mold a
truly moving reproduction of Mr. Dickens’s classic
with all its hates and counterplots, tender love and gal-
lant sacrifice.

The effectiveness of the suffering, desperation and de-
structive revenge of the rabbles is great. There is as pro-
found an emotional incitement as that which flared at the
beginning of the new France in the rising by the oppressed
in their rags to turn the crude implements of rebellion
against their silk-and-satined oppressors, the vortex of
social upset catching helpless innocents. Dickens’s “Two
Cities” is a commendable cinema successor to his “David
Copperfield” of last winter. David Selznick in Holly-
wood created both.

I Dream Too Much

HE MOTION picture debut of petite Lily Pons,

the fragile diva, will be a pleasant surprise to
cinema followers, for they will find a sparkling, lovable
new personality who carries from the stage of the opera
a great voice that is set on film as naturally and capably
as the performance of an established cinema comedienne,
to the music and laughter of a musical comedy bubbling
with fun.

The rubber-stamp idea of an operatic triumph at
any price, which almost invariably has marked the pre-
vious screen appearances of opera stars, is stressed only
slightly. Annette (Lily Pons), poor and obscure French
miss with a rare voice, disregarding operatic tradition,
sets aside any ambitions for a career in favor of home
and baby with a young taxicab husband (Henry Fonda),
who has ambitions to write music. His fame arrives
through her successful efforts and her voice in his
musical comedy.

Miss Pons has full opportunity to display her vocal gifts,
which especially impress in her rendition of the brilliant
arias, the “Bell Song” from Delibes’s “Lakme” and the
“Caro Nome” from “Rigoletto.” ‘These scenes, however,
are merely highlights that bring into sharper relief the
yearning of a young girl for the pure joy of living, a joy
that is felt while she is perched on a merry-go-round sing-
ing to a small urchin the chanson of “The Jockey on the
Carrousel.”

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

Be The COMMONWEAL Says:
“A very beautiful, human and tender play”
Margaret Rawlings

ARNELL

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The binders are loose leaf with a capacity of
twenty-six issues. They are handsomely bound
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In ordering the binders specify the number
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on our list to receive future binders as issued.

THE COMMONWEAL

386 Fourth Avenue
New York City

Books

The Year’s Elite among Books

OR SOME reason or other it is assumed that edi-

torial staffs possess the right to effect an annual
separation of literary wheat from the chaff. We doubt
not a bit, however, that some of the most interesting and
worth-while books of the season are missing from the fol-
lowing and all similar lists. The intention is to provide,
during this eventful season, a kind of shoppers’ guide to
the bewildered seeker after an honest tome. No single
work is guaranteed to be fool-proof in every respect. We
have tried to eliminate what we consider banal or offen-
sive, and we have included a somewhat larger number of
Catholic books than the secular chooser would include.
If assistance is rendered thereby, we shall be grateful.
But if we lead some friend on what he eventually con-
siders a wild goose chase, we shall remind him of the
ancient diagnosis of taste’s diversity.

And now for a few novels. Women have certainly
held their own, with Mary Ellen Chase’s “Silas Crockett”
(Macmillan. $2.50), Willa Cather’s “Lucy Gayheart”
(Knopf. $2.00), Ellen Glasgow’s “Vein of Iron” (Har-
court, Brace. $2.50), and Rachel Field’s “Time Out of
Mind” (Macmillan. $2.50). The two principal male
efforts were probably Thornton Wilder’s “Heaven’s My
Destination” (Harper. $2.50), and Thomas Wolfe’s
“Of Time and the River” (Scribner’s. $3.00). Votes of
approval have likewise been cast for R. P. T. Coffin’s
“Red Sky in the Morning” (Macmillan. $2.50), Mau-
rice Walsh’s “Green Rushes” (Stokes. $2.50), and
Francis Brett Young’s “White Ladies” (Harper. $2.50).
Our choice among translations are ‘““The Wish Child,” by
Ina Seidel (Farrar and Rinehart. $2.75), and (with
reservations) “Young Joseph,” by Thomas Mann (Knopf.
$2.50). Catholic novels of varying interest and merit are:
Sigrid Undset’s ‘““The Longest Years” (Knopf. $2.00),
Helen White’s “Not Built with Hands” (Macmillan.
$2.50), William Thomas Walsh’s “Out of the Whirl-
wind” (McBride. $2.50) and Lucille Borden’s “White
Hawthorn” (Macmillan. $2.50).

If you are interested in poetry, this is a fruitful year.
From the “Collected Plays” of William Butler Yeats
(Macmillan. $3.50) to “Murder in the Cathedral,” by
T. S. Eliot (Harcourt, Brace. $1.50), is a long way, but
the trip is worth making. ‘There is also the important
“Unpublished Poems of Emily Dickinson,” edited by
Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson
(Little, Brown. $7.50). Newer books by American
poets include R. P. Tristram Coffin’s “Strange Holiness”
(Macmillan. $1.50), Daniel Sargent’s “God’s Ambus-
cade” (Longmans. $2.00), and Father Leonard Feeney’s
“Boundaries” (Macmillan. $1.25). From England and
Ireland come Laurence Whistler’s “Four Walls” (Mac-
millan. $1.25), Thomas McGreevey’s “Poems” (Viking.
$1.25), and Elizabeth Daryush’s “Verses: Fourth Book”
(Oxford. $2.00).

Of biography and personal record there is so much that
one can satisfy almost every mood and taste. Were we

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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal a

forced to limit ourselves to three volumes, our choice
would be: “Thomas More,” by R. W. Chambers (Har-
court, Brace. $3.75), “God’s Soldier: General William
Booth,” by St. John Ervine (Macmillan. $7.50), and
Anne Lindbergh’s “North to the Orient” (Harcourt,
Brace. $2.50). But other titles race close behind these.
Derek Patmore’s “Portrait of My Family” (Harper.
$3.75), Edgar Lee Masters’s ““Vachel Lindsay” (Scrib-
ner’s. $3.00), Hilaire Belloc’s “Milton” (Lippincott.

$4.00) and Grant C. Knight’s “James Lane Allen and

the Genteel Tradition” (University of North Carolina.
$2.50) are samples of the newer literary biography.
American subjects are dealt with in Clarence Day’s “Life
with Father” (Knopf. $2.00), Mari Sandoz’s “Old
Jules” (Little, Brown. $3.00), Francis X. Talbot’s “A
Saint among Savages” (Harper. $3.50), and James Weber
Linn’s “Jane Addams” (Appleton-Century. $3.50).
From cther climes spring Evelyn Waugh’s “Edmund
Campion” (Sheed and Ward. $2.50), T. E. Lawrence’s
“Seven Pillars of Wisdom” (Doubleday, Doran. $5.00),
Pierre Crabités’s “Benes” (Routledge. 12/6) and Bea-
trice White’s “Mary Tudor” (Macmillan. $5.00). Our
selection from the year’s memoirs is: Sir Esme Howard’s
“Theatre of Life” (Little, Brown. $3.50), David Lam-
son’s “We Who Are about to Die” (Scribner’s. $2.50)
and Ernest Dimnet’s “My Old World” (Simon and
Schuster. $2.50). Douglas Freeman’s monumental
“Robert E. Lee” was completed during the year (Scrib-
ner’s. Four volumes: $3.75 each). For good measure
we add the following: “Roger B. Taney,” by Carl Brent
Swisher (Macmillan. $5.00), “The Autobiography of
Michel de Montaigne,” edited by Marvin Lowenthal
(Houghton Mifflin. $3.00), and “The Cast-Iron Man:
John C. Calhoun’”’ (Longmans. $3.00). One of the best
books of the year—perhaps a “classic’”—is Walter de la
Mare’s “Early One Morning” (Macmillan. $5.00).

More solidly historical than the average reader re-
quires for his easy chair, but uncommonly useful none the
less, are the three published volumes of “European Civili-
zation,” edited by Edward Eyre (Oxford. $5.25 each),
the second volume of “A History of the Church,” by
Philip Hughes (Sheed and Ward. $4.00), and “The
United States: 1830-1850,” by Frederick J. Turner
(Holt. $4.50). Three interesting contributions to the
history of the war period have appeared: “Woodrow
Wilson: Life and Letters,’’ Volume V, by Ray Stannard
Baker (Doubleday, Doran. $4.00), “The Campaign of
the Marne,” by Sewell T. Tyng (Longmans. $3.75),
and “A History of the Great War,” by C. R. M. F.
Cruttwell (Oxford. $5.50). We enjoyed Dana C.
Munro’s “Kingdom of the Crusaders” (Appleton-
Century. $2.50).

Of aids to literary study there are many, notably such
large-scale publications as ““The Letters of Gerard Man-
ley Hopkins to Robert Bridges; The Correspondence of
Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon”
(Oxford. $10.00), “The Letters of Charles and Mary
Lamb,” edited by E. V. Lucas (Yale. $18.00), and
“Mark Twain’s Notebook,” edited by Albert Bigelow
Paine (Harper. $4.00). From among the other books

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

IRISH ARTS AND
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Books on Ireland from all publishers
Historical, Musical and Fiction

Belleek china, laces, handkerchiefs, table
linens, steamer rugs, poplin ties, Kapp and
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How the missions plead for quinine! Seven
hundred million sufferers, or about one-third
of the whole human race are constantly ill of
malaria; and quinine is the one specific for this
dread disease. They suffer, they pray and the
missionaries have not enough of the little white

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One thousand tablets, $5.00

Three thousand tablets, $12.50
Six thousand tablets, $22.50
Ten thousand tablets, $35.00
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You aid souls as well as bodies by thus helping
the medical missions. Send your donations to
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8 and 10 West 17th Street, New York, N. Y.

we choose: Richard Dana Skinner’s “Eugene O'Neill: A
Poet’s Quest” (Longmans. $2.00), Willard L. Sperry’s
“Wordsworth’s Anti-Climax” (Harvard. $2.50), “The
Victorians and Their Reading,” by Amy Cruse (Hough-
ton Mifflin. $4.00), “The Fays of the Abbey Theatre,”
by W. G. Fay and Catherine Carswell (Harcourt, Brace,
$3.50), and “Dictionary of Modern American Usage,”
by H. W. Horwill (Oxford. $3.25).

The rain patters no more steadily on an April day than
do publishers’ announcements of new books on various
aspects of the contemporary American scene. We venture
somewhat timidly the following selection: “The Road to
War,” by Walter Millis (Houghton Mifflin. $3.50),
“A Better Economic Order,” by John A. Ryan (Harper,
$2.50), “Land of the Free,” by Herbert Agar (Houghton
Mifflin. $3.50), “The Will to Freedom,” by Ross J.
Hoffman (Sheed and Ward. $1.50), “The Liberal Tra-
dition,” by Lewis W. Douglas (Van Nostrand. $1.50),
“The Citizen and His Government,” by Alfred E. Smith
(Harper. $2.50), “The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth,”
by Hugh S. Johnson (Doubleday, Doran. $3.00), “The
Formation of Capital,” by Harold G. Moulton (Brook-
ings Institution. $2.50), “The Du Pont Dynasty,” by
John K. Winkler (Reynal. $3.00), “Black Reconstruc-
tion,” by W. E. B. Du Bois (Harcourt, Brace. $4.50),
“Government in a Planned Democracy,” by A. N. Hol-
combe (Norton. $2.00), “Our Enemy the State,” by
Albert Jay Nock (Morrow. $2.25), “America Faces the
Barricades,” by John L. Spivak (Covici-Friede. $2.50),
and “The Gay Reformer,” by Mauritz A. Hallgren
(Knopf. $2.50).

Anent the foreign scene, we recommend “I Was Hit-
ler’s Prisoner,” by Stefan Lorrant (Putnam. $2.75),
“The Russian Revolution,” by William Henry Cham-
berlin (Macmillan. $10.00), “Like a Mighty Army,”
by George N. Shuster (Appleton-Century. $2.00),
“Blood-Drenched Altars,” by Bishop Francis Clement
Kelley (Bruce. $3.00), “Chaos in Mexico,” by Charles
S. Macfarland (Harper. $2.00), “A History of Na-
tional Socialism,” by Konrad Heiden (Knopf. $3.00),
and—a very scholarly work—“The Diplomacy of Im-
perialism, 1890-1902,” by William L. Langer (Knopf.
$7.50). Regretfully enough, we pass by much else of
interest in this demesne.

On various aspects of religion and philosophy there is
also a vast literature. Importance cannot be denied to
such books as “Man the Unknown,” by Alexis Carrel
(Harper. $3.00), “Polarity,” by Erich Przywara (Ox-
ford. $3.00), and “The Two Sources of Morality and
Religion,” by Henri Bergson (Holt. $3.00). But pos-
sibly most readers will prefer “Science and the Super-
natural,” by Arnold Lunn and J. B. S. Haldane (Sheed
and Ward. $3.00), and “In Quest of Beauty,” by Dom
Willibrod Verkade (Kenedy. $2.00). We sincerely
recommend the following also: “A Philosophy of Form,”
by E. I. Watkin (Sheed and Ward. $3.75); “The
Mystical Body of Christ,” by Fulton J. Sheen (Sheed
and Ward. $2.50); “Christian Art,” by C. R. Morey
(Longmans. $1.75); “Mirage and Truth,” by M. C.
D’Arcy (Macmillan. $1.75); “The Pilgrim’s Regress,”

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The Commonweal al

by C. S. Lewis (Sheed and Ward. $2.25), and “The
Well and the Shadows,” by G. K. Chesterton (Sheed and
Ward. $2.50).

Nor must we fail to recall that two reference works
have been brought to completion during the year: “The
Columbia Encyclopedia” (Columbia. $17.50), a one-
volume tout ensemble which has many virtues, and “Der
Grosse Herder,” a German Catholic general encyclopedia
of rare merit.

Don’t forget the poor author!
Tue Epirors.

A Starry Sheaf

God’s Ambuscade. A Book of Poems, by Daniel Sar-
gent. New York: Longmans, Green and Company. $2.00.
AMBUSCADE” is in many ways a pro-

vocative little book, often a very precious little
book; to have it from the president of the Catholic Poetry
Society of America augurs well for the good estate of
contemporary verse and the Catholic mind.

It is evident the two strongest influences upon Mr.
Sargent’s poetry have been the Catholic religion and his
young daughter’s sense of joy in the world about her.
Nearly all of the verses could be read aloud for her de-
light—“Hay Lofts” (an irregular sonnet but a charm-
ing lyric) and “Sparrows,” the songs of “May” and
“June” and of “Guardian Angels”—although these are
not what we are accustomed to call children’s poems.
“Courtesy,” whose title recalls a very different but un-
forgettable poem by Belloc, is one of the most enchant-
ing—and most definitely Sargentesque. It begins:

“Blessed be God who made such pretty birches

And spent such gold in dandelions’ crowns.
He made small swallows flying o’er great churches,
Made little fish that gaze from streams at towns.”

There are other verses haunted by

“the darkness in God’s plan,
His failure, Man:”
but the dramatic narratives of Cain and of Golgotha are
scarcely those which themselves haunt when the book
is laid aside. It is not easy, however, to throw off the
memory of those verses dealing with death: and “The
Last Day” is a poem of the resurrection of the body
quite breathtaking in its simple acceptance of the stu-
pendous. The same note, its drama and imagery even
more highly concentrated, sings through Mr. Sargent’s
superb meditation upon “Magnificence”:
“Which makes the thunder-cloud mount from the sea,
And a herd of deer charge suddenly over a hill,
And in the jungle a python suddenly
Ripple a coil that lay like a tree-limb still.
And which shall make the skeletons that have died—
That long have lain in weltering of the tomb—
Arise at last dawn-lit, electrified,
To stand like nine-pins on the Field of Doom.”
So starry a sheaf of verses, issued just at the Christ-
mas season, is one of the blessings for which Charles

Lamb would have wished to offer up thanksgiving.
KATHERINE Bricy.

SAFEGUARD
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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

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Saints Made Human

Sunshine and Saints, by Daisy H. Moseley. New York:
P. J. Kenedy and Sons. $1.50.

TEN short biographies based on an impressive number
of the authoritative studies of the saints comprise this
attractive volume. Its authenticity, although unhappily
nowhere vouched for in the book, is particularly welcome
because too often in the juvenile religious field popular
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Very Clever

Boundaries, by Leonard Feeney, §.J. New York: The
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LyRICcAL whimseys that are infinitely more than
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that is he. Serious, yet he never gets serious. What a
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More literally whimsical than the rest, page 35 chuckles
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CONTRIBUTORS

G, K. Cuzsterton, English writer and critic, is the author of
many books of which the latest is “The Well and the Shallows.”

Micuaet O’SHavuGHNEssy is a New York business man and the
editor of weekly and monthly reperts on the oil industry.

Fev1x Timmermans is a Flemish writer, author of ‘Peter
Brueghel.” The accompanying piece is translated by H. L
Ripperger.

AnNE Ryan is a poet and essayist, author of “Lost Hills.’

Cuartes WILLIS THomPson is a veteran political correspondent
for New York journals, His latest book is “Presidents I’ve Known
and Two Near Presidents.”

Kurt Frank Reinxuarpt is a professor in the department of
Germanic languages at Stanford University, Calif.

Katrine Brécy is a critic and poet and the author of “The
Poet’s Chantry,” “Poets and Pilgrims” and “From Dante to
Jeanne d’Arc,’

45
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December 20, 1935

The Commonweal ii

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The Commonweal

December 20, 1935

<A

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