bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Strike and the Press
Authors: Editor The
Published: July 2007

One of the incidents of the Strike was the suppression of some of the big newspapers and the curtailment of all of them. The news was most scanty at the very time when, from hour to hour, everyone was eager for bulletins. In the more remote parts of the country the disorganised postal services prevented even the arrival of the meagre sheet that did service for the morning paper; and those people who had not access to the wireless were left mostly in the dark. Most of the journalists were silenced by the the stoppage of the printing machines; and those writers who could have their say were, owing to the abnormal conditions, reduced to a brevity of utterance and a terseness of expression more often met with in the writings of the mediaeval philosophers than in the outpourings of the philosophers of Fleet Street. The wireless and the stump orator came into their own. The former, we suspected, from its reticence about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s peace appeal, was being controlled on some principle of artificial selection; and the latter gave us views rather than news. The British public, which is often accused of relying with a too slavish trust upon its press, found that it had to live through a very trying time without the light and leading that comes from the printed word —or, at least, with very little of it. The powerful Daily Maildisappeared before the strike began. Some say that its disappearance was the occasion if not the cause of things being brought to a head.
Virtue in a Vicious Circle
Authors: Baptist Reeves John
Published: July 2007

‘The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.’

In an important work just published Mr. R. H. Tawney quotes this passage from Locke to illustrate the conception of itself by which society in England has lived and developed since the seventeenth century. This conception, he points out, is fundamentally opposed to the Catholic conception of society which it displaced. Revelation was displaced by reason; and the criterion of political institutions became expediency, instead of religious authority. The Church of the Middle Ages was a vast commonwealth, including the whole religious, political, social and economic life of its subjects under a single organic system of law—the moral law of Christianity. Already in Tudor times, the State in England had usurped all the functions of a Church, with expediency for its primary law. ‘By the end of the seventeenth century the secular State, separated from the Churches, which are subordinate to it, has emerged from the theory which regarded both as dual aspects of a single society. The former pays a shadowy deference to religion; the latter do not meddle with the external fabric of the political and social system, which is the concern of the former. . . . The State, first in England, then in France and America, finds its sanction, not in religion, but in nature, in a presumed contract to establish it, in the necessity for mutual protection and the convenience of mutual assistance.
The Strike and the Lock-Out
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The strike and the lock-out are of frequent occurrence in the industrial history of the nineteenth century. What is their meaning? What their significance?

The strike is the refusal of the workman—be he labourer or skilled mechanic, miner or railway man, docker or engineer—to perform his task under conditions that to him and his fellows are intolerable. In every normal case of a strike of any large body of men the ground of the refusal is always stated plainly; either the wages paid are insufficient, that is, are less than a living wage, or the hours of labour are too long. The strike, to put it briefly, is the effort of the labourer to get a larger share of the wealth which he has created; for all material wealth—food and fuel, clothing and dwelling houses, and the thousand and one comforts and adornments of social life, all the conveniences (the ‘damnable conveniences,’ as Father Vincent McNabb has styled them) of civilisation—are created by the application of human labour to the earth and its waters. By no other means can material wealth be created.

The lock-out is the refusal of the employer to allow work to be performed unless it is performed on the conditions he lays down. And, again, in most cases the employer—master-builder or farmer, colliery proprietor or factory owner (in our own times the employer is usually a limited liability company), locks out the workman because the latter will not agree to work on a reduced wage or for a longer number of hours.
The Land of Shinar
Authors: Dudley Buxton L. H.
Published: July 2007

And Cush begat Nimrod. . . . He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah.

Years ago it was my good fortune to visit a high ecclesiastical dignitary of one of the strange sects of the Middle East, who received us after the ancient fashion and even provided water for us to wash our feet, although the distance between his house and the Residency where I was staying was a matter of a few hundred yards. After a formal conversation we began to discuss interesting matters, and he told me a good deal of the life of the Bedouins of the desert east of the mountains of Moab. After some talk he suddenly stopped, and said : ‘Why should I describe all this to you? You will find it in much better perspective in Genesis; for, after all, the richer Sheikhs live a life which is exactly like that of Abraham.’

Until recently I had forgotten the old man’s talk, but last winter fortune took me to Jerusalem, and then from Amman, the ancient Philadelphia, to Baghdad. From there we went to Kish, and helped in the excavations which are being carried on jointly by the University of Oxford and the Field Museum of Chicago. Unfortunately, we did not get to Mosul, so we were not able to see the city of Nineveh, which lies on the other side of the Tigris from the modern town.
An Island Cloud-Factory
Authors: Gray John
Published: July 2007

There are light effects in Skye not seen elsewhere; forms of the cloud in relation to the mountain beyond desire. The Cuillin Hills and the clouds have much reciprocally to say; for the island, shaped as it is laterally and vertically, jammed as it is between the sun and the sea, is a place of conflicting temperatures. Look at a contour map, and you will see to the south-west what might be the fragment of a honeycomb cosmically vast. The corries formed in admirable number by means of this geological conformation are so many matrices for the gestation of clouds. These formed are slow to float, and cling reluctantly to the rocky summits.

Skye is of all the most mountainous of islands; only Tasmania may be mentioned in the same sentence. Island supposes sea; the configuration of this island is erratic, as if long fingers had played with dough. In any case, then, you would have incomparable scenery; but add to what is exceptional this : that the hills as hills are of the highest class, with every quality hills should have. Scale, if there be any need to repeat it, is an abstract thing of relation, having absolutely little value. The properties of hills are mass, outline, colour: these possess them with emphasis; colour and outline varied in so much beauty that comparisons taunt the mind in vain. There is no bracken in the black and red hills: which is to say that the glorious pest has only just roothold in the island : but what robust compensations : and the glory of the land the barren gabbro pinnacles. Vegetation has a meagre part assigned it in places where if lichen can cling to a stone it is lucky. Why, here you may speak of a scree as vertical and provoke no exclamation.
Henri Gheon, The Saints' Playwright
Authors: Balfour Mrs. Reginald
Published: July 2007

In this generation we still invoke the Saints. But we no longer make friends of them. We hardly know them. We charge them with our commissions without knowing anything about their qualifications. We are satisfied with their good references. Ask that good woman kneeling before the plaster statue of St. Anthony of Padua what she can tell you of the great ascete and miracle worker. All she knows is that he keeps a lost property office.

‘Through the influence of Protestantism an abstract representation of Spiritual things has supplanted the realistic, mystic and living faith of our forefathers. We have lost at the same time both our sense of the supernatural and of the material in the practice of our religion. The faithful of the Middle Ages really felt and realised Our Lord’s presence amongst them. They confided themselves to Mary as to a real Mother, they grasped the hands of their Guardian Angels, believed in the Devil and lived, without self-consciousness, in happy companionship with their patron Saints. Now, though we still commemorate them and invoke them, our Saints do not follow us out of church.’

So says M. Henri Ghéon in his preface to his volume of Jeux et Miracles four le Peuple Fidele, in which he tells us something of his purpose and ideals in his religious dramatic art. M. Ghéon finds the Saints and their lives and doings as vivid and as dramatic as any personalities or situations he could invent, and he has devoted his very charming talent to making them known to us, his contemporaries, as living human characters.
St. John's Witness to the Blessed Sacrament
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

If we are to value St. John’s witness to the Blessed Sacrament as it ought to be valued, we must understand what his words added to the witness of the three Evangelists who had preceded him. Moreover, we must realise the state of doctrine and church order which obtained when the Fourth Gospel was written.

When St. John determined to write yet another Gospel, the Church of Jesus Christ had taken definite shape. In spite of momentary hesitations, here and there it had met denials of its doctrine by quite simple affirmations. At the first Council of Jerusalem it had very definitely taken a step which severed it from the parent womb of Judaism, and gave it a separate personal existence. In contradistinction to the Iou&uot [Jews or Judeans] so prominent in the Fourth Gospel, the Church was now called Xpianavot [Christians]. Not only did men distinguish these two in fact; but they distinguished them in name. The separation between child and parent was complete.

In this process of separation few things if any had been so powerful as the Holy Eucharist. What the sabbath sacrifices were to Jewry the Holy Eucharist was to the Church. To the Pagan world a Jew was a man who refused to join in pagan temple worship; but once a week, on the Sabbath, worshipped in a synagogue. To the same pagan world the Christian soon began to be recognised as one who refused to join in pagan temple-worship; but once a week, on what he called the Lord’s Day, worshipped in his own assembly.
The Friars-Preachers in Russia
Authors: Bennigsen George
Published: July 2007

The first Dominicans came to Russia in 1222, only a year after another group of Friars had set foot for the first time on English soil.

With the exception of the Apostolic times, no other period in the history of the Church can be compared to the first half of the thirteenth century. In founding their respective Orders both Dominic and Francis gave such an impulse to the entire Catholic world that during subsequent centuries their successors had only to follow in the footsteps of their great predecessors. It was to Hyacinth, one of his first disciples, that St. Dominic entrusted the mission of evangelizing Northern Europe.

St. Hyacinth was a member of the noble Polish family of Odrowaz, and had been received into the Order of Preachers in 1220. Shortly afterwards, accompanied by three other Polish friars, St. Hyacinth returned to his native country. In Cracow he founded his first monastery, and then started on his missionary journey. In two years the Saint had visited Poland, Prussia, Denmark, Scandinavia, Finland. Everywhere his passage was marked by the establishment of Dominican monasteries. In 1222 he at last reached Red Russia, or Galicia, and, having founded a monastery in Halic, proceeded to Kiev.

At that time Russia presented an agglomeration of principalities (Oudiely), governed by princes, descendants of Saint Vladimir, the most important principality being that of Kiev, whose Great Prince was the doyen amongst the other princes.
The ‘Infiorata’ of Genzano: A Picture of Corpus Christi Day
Authors: Randall A. W. G.
Published: July 2007

Corpus Christi Day in Rome generally finds the tide of foreign visitors on the ebb, happily so, at least from one point of view. The curious crowds who invade the churches in Holy Week are not always drawn by religion, nor is their presence always an aid to devotion. But by the time the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday comes the mere tripper has left for a cooler climate and other ‘sights,’ and the Italian, with those who know and appreciate his religion, is left more or less undisturbed. Sophistication vanishes, simplicity returns, and one has the feeling that what stage-managing there is comes from pure interest in the occasion, from an undivided attention to a great tradition. Corpus Christi Day processions are beautiful anywhere, but hardly anywhere do they show such ingenuous elaboration, such mingling of local pride, childlike pleasure, and natural beauty as at Genzano, the little town in the wine-growing country near Rome, above Lake Nemi.

For the people of Genzano and the country for miles round it is not only the festival of Corpus Domini; it is the Infiorata, the festival of the flowers. The religion of the country and the life and pleasures of the local inhabitants are intermixed in a way which only a people who have no doubts can show. It is, of course, a public holiday, and after the early Masses the cafes and the wineshops are full. A committee of townspeople is formed to organise the Infiorata.
Beauty in Catholic Churches
Authors: Jones David
Published: July 2007

Among those people who are conscious of and annoyed by the complete badness manifest in the building and decoration, in use in the Catholic Church in our days, there are very few who regard the matter as anything more than a superficial defect that can be, with care, remedied. There are few who realise the essentially malignant and even mortal nature of the infection that so ails us.

Most of these people speak with varying degrees of confidence about ways and means of ‘improving the taste of the Faithful,’ of educating people up to this or that notion. Again, others propose the copying on a vast scale the works of certain respectable and accredited masters of the past centuries, thereby improving the ‘outward appearance’ of churches and images. By this manoeuvre they hope to get the unsuspecting worshipper used to the form and comeliness of the Italian primitives and other work of men who lived in more civilized periods than our own— so leading them on until, after a very few years of this aesthetic welfare-work, the most suburban Catholic will revile the pink and white Madonnas as supplied by the ‘church-furniture shop’ and have nothing less than exact reproductions of Giotto or sixth century Byzantine.

Whatever may be said for these sincere attempts of pious people, the root of the matter is left untouched ; it is not even approached. The issue is usually confused by a notion of ‘giving the best to God.’ I say confused because it creates in the mind the notion that there can be constructed a kind of scale of beauty,
From Thérèse to Nénette
Authors: Rice Cyprian
Published: July 2007

The Saints have their spiritual lineage, their spiritual fecundity. We can trace, for instance, in one direct line of vital influence, the mystic genealogy of St. Theresa of Jesus through St. Catherine of Siena to St. Gertrude. But the great Avilan, that giantess among the Saints and ‘Mater Spiritualium,’ is invited to rejoice more ecstatically, because a whole world of Carmels is peopled with her daughters,

‘Each with the Mother’s likeness,

‘And something all her own.’

The noblest quality of the Saint is the power he possesses of begetting others in his spirit. Each friend of Jesus in his turn finds in himself, in some degree, a superabundance of exceptional graces by which he can help in giving life to others: to others who will, in due time, be able to stand up to the world and answer for themselves. Among the offspring of Theresa of Spain one sweet violet has drawn to herself, in love and veneration, the whole Catholic world of our generation. Jesus is in her, reconciling the sinful, sentimental multitudes to His holy love. There is now a gospel according to Theresa. It is a gospel poured forth upon a thirsty world from a heart so full of grace that no barrier of age or sex or enclosure could prevent it from leaping forth into the sunlight, to delight Christendom. ‘We cannot help uttering what we have seen and heard,’ protested the Apostles; and the new St. Theresa has seen and heard, and she, too, must needs speak, teaching her ‘little way,’ better than the best of bodhi-sattvas.
Crime and Society
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

What is crime? Who is a criminal? The questions persist; they call for answer every time the Reports of Prison Commissioners are issued. Before we decide how the criminal is to be treated let us know who the criminal is; let us discover how any one of us, at present, it may well be, unconvicted and at large, can fall into crime and be lodged in gaol. Why do we put people in prison? is the first question. Arising out of that (as the House of Commons would express it) is the supplementary question : How are we to treat our neighbour when we have put him (or her) in prison? In short, What is crime, and how is it committed?

Father Francis Day, in his booklet, The Community and the Criminal, rightly called a ‘guide to Catholic service,’ so full is it of helpful information and the wise counsel of experience for all Catholics who would help our prisoners and captives—offers as ‘a working definition of crime’ :—’ A deliberate act contrary to those laws of the State which enforce or interpret the Natural Law.’ And this Natural Law, Father Day reminds us, is ‘universal, based on human nature and manifested by reason.’

If this definition be true, and far be it from the layman to suggest doubt, how few, how very few, are the inmates of prison—past or present—who can justly be labelled ‘criminal.’ The State, indeed, makes no pretence of requiring general obedience to Natural Law.
A Martyr
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

About twenty years ago I set down for publication what I now feel I must publish. The heroine of the story has been dead some years. If there is any poignancy in what I write, it comes from my having written down the martyr’s words with scrupulous accuracy a few minutes after hearing them.

Heard May 6th, 19—, in a slum bed-sitting room, scrupulously clean.

‘It was the time when there were meetings against Catholics.’ (By this she meant the No Popery agitation of 1850.)

‘I went to some, and was very angry that they would not let Catholics speak.

‘I told the Vicar what I thought. He said : “You are half a Roman Catholic.”

‘“No,” I said, “but I like fair play. I like to hear the other side. You won’t let Catholics tell their side of the question.”

‘I read Catholic books; read them in bed—read by night. They had been saying dreadful things against the Confessional. I knew a Catholic woman. So I went to her, and said : “Would you be so kind as to let me see one of your prayer books?” She looked at me for some time. Then she said : “ I could not let you take it back with you. But if you like to look at it here, you can do so.” She took me to another room, and handed me the Prayer-book. I found the Examination of Conscience, but could not come across any of the dreadful things I had heard about it.

‘Then I said to Mrs. X—: “Your priest” (who lodged across the road) “seems to me a good man. Could I see him? I should like to convert him—”
What Dogma does not Define
Authors: Gordon George R. E.
Published: July 2007

The infallible dogmas of the Holy Roman Church have always attracted so much attention that the world as a whole has remained in ignorance of the vast terrain on which the Church not only permits but encourages what we may call agnosticism. Just as she has been uncompromising in maintaining the revelation entrusted to her and the definitions she has once reached, so she has always insisted that there are immense tracts of investigation with which she has no direct concern, and which she leaves to the human intellect; regions regarding which she has no enlightenment to convey and which in many cases are beyond the reach of reason.

Take, for example, her attitude towards Science as defined in that same Council of 1870 which defined the Infallibility of the Pope. She leaves ‘to each of the Sciences to make use of its own principles and its own method in its own sphere.’ She wishes to preserve them from error, certainly, by warning them that, if in conflict with the truth, there must be some mistake : and she wishes also to prevent their encroaching magisterially on the realm of faith. But she does not dictate the movements of the stars to the astronomers, nor the composition of substances to the chemists. She urges rather that the rightly-ordered reason not only produces fruit of itself, but leads on to a truth better than its own.’ So far, therefore, is the Church from opposing the cultivation of the human arts and sciences, that she in many ways helps and promotes it;
Has Democracy Failed?
Authors: Le Huray C. P.
Published: July 2007

In this country, democracy is a political article of faith subscribed to by all three parties. It is a political platitude that the whole of the population of a country should bow to the will of the majority. Any attack made on this creed has been purely academic. The ‘rights’ of minorities have been asserted by lukewarm agitation for proportional representation or for the alternative vote, but the mathematical complexities of these methods of voting have left the bulk of the citizens of this country cold. Parliament already possesses three main parties—one with a right and a left wing, capable of splitting into two at any time—besides one representative of the Communists, one of the Prohibitionists, and one or two of the Co-operators. There is no general desire in this country for a multiplicity of parties, on the French model. The Britisher is politically a man of principle. He votes Conservative or Liberal on traditional principle, or Labour on class principle.

In An Enemy of the People Ibsen attempted to preach a sermon from the text ‘the majority is always wrong.’ At first sight his text appears demonstrably true. All the great crimes of the world, all’ the wars, all the executions of the martyrs, have been sanctioned by the majority. History is a record of mass errors of judgment, but its verdict is that the majority is always the tool of an unscrupulous minority. Still, the theory ‘Vox populi, vox Dei’ persists, just as it is popularly supposed that the Press expresses, rather than forms, public opinion.
Trinidad Tyranny
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

It really is tyranny when a colonial Governor endeavours to push through his Legislative Assembly or even otherwise make statutory legal measures which deprive his subjects of certain commonly admitted rights. This is precisely what happened in Trinidad at the end of last year and at the beginning of this. The Governor, through his educational policy, decided to close the Assisted Training Schools for teachers, and compel the students, who intended to make teaching their profession, to be trained at the Government Training College. That is to say, he closed the Catholic Training College, and insisted that the Catholics who wished to become teachers should be trained only in the Government Training College.

There are three preliminary statements to be made about this proceeding before we deal with the matter itself of the Governor’s enactment:—

(1) The Catholic population of the islands of Trinidad and Tobago is at least one third of the whole population of these islands.

(2) The Government College has as its headmaster, and has had for many years, an admirable gentleman from Cambridge who has publicly and privately denounced the system of denominational schools.

(3) The curriculum of the College as printed by the Government under the date August, 1925, and with the specified approval of the Acting Director of Education, gives as the subject of the first year’s history lectures :

‘A Study of H. G. Wells’s Short History of the World, Chapters 1-30’;

In the second year: Short History of the World (Wells), Chapter 30 to end;

And as the text-book for both years : Wells’s Short History of the World.
Abbe Fernand Portal
Authors: Bennigsen Olga
Published: July 2007

Some years ago a Russian stood in painful hesitation on the threshold of the Church. She had reached it after many dark years wasted away in vain endeavours to still the insatiable cravings of the soul and by artificial interests and excitements fill the emptiness of a life, in which God had no place.

The War and the fearful catastrophe, which had engulfed her country, partially opened this Russian’s eyes to the Truth, though as yet it was but a faint glimmer and in nowise the full light. The mind of the homeless exile was captivated by the powerful organisation of the Church Universal, the one stable Rock and haven of refuge, standing alone, proud and unshaken, amidst the hideous wreckage of the contemporary world. The mind had understood, but the heart remained untouched and the spiritual side was not yet revealed to her. Friendless and lonely, knowing nothing of the Catholic England, this Russian would have been lost if at this critical moment of her life a relative in Paris had not put her into touch with a French priest. A correspondence ensued. Passages of some letters of this priest, translated for the benefit of (English readers, are given here :

Sept., 1921.

‘M-me X. tells me I can do you some good by writing to you. She has been saying so for months. . . . . I cannot refuse the venture, and if you do me the honour of writing to me with entire confidence, as every Christian soul may write to a priest of Jesus Christ, I shall endeavour not to show myself too unworthy of the mission I will hold from you only and the limits of which you alone will determine.’
Dods
Authors: Gray John
Published: July 2007

North Berwick is justly esteemed. The sea there is what water is supposed to be, transparent. There are skerries ghostly enough in certain lights to be worth journeying to see, in the wide proportions of nature at the opening of the firth acceptable in all lights. And the villas, with their Scotch comfort and dignified rents! a place, too, where you meet the more discerning of your southern acquaintance ; and in the social atmosphere there are particulars to which visitors rightly attach value: the incidence of immovables to feu a division of time often overlooked, the forenoon, separated between two ticks of the clock from the afternoon. Many accuracies of speech besides assert indeed no grammatical superiority, but hint with politeness that historical English has more than one arbiter; and, above all, for holiday purposes, give a zest to trivial conversation; and— many things are to be said in favour of North Berwick.

But there is a solid background to that ephemeral watering-place all praise. No doubt villages easily reached meet the approval of the visitor and survive comparison with those of Oxfordshire: Dirleton, Whitekirk, Athelstanford; and winding, shady roads lead to desirable spots like Tyninghame Bay, where the river which crosses the county from Fala direction discharges reluctantly in flats dense with sea buckthorn; but better lies closer along the northern wreckage of the moor, Spott, Garvald, Gifford, and many a hamlet. The general aspect of the land, precarious farming, hesitating lines of communication, secure varieties of view to satisfy the exacting.
Breton and Basque
Authors: Fendall C. P.
Published: July 2007

Of France, yet not in their own opinions French, in spite of the distance apart in race, in language, in country, Breton and Basque have much in common. Both agricultural people they cling to their old traditions as races apart from the French of whose country their lands form part, to their own languages, and they are devout Catholics.

The Breton is a Celt, he claims, and history supports his claim to be descended from Celtic immigrants from Great Britain. The Basque knows not whence he came, some people say the Basque people are the only remnant of the population of the lost continent of Atlantis, the last of an earlier wave of immigration from the East than those which bore Westwards the other peoples of Europe. The language of the Breton bears out his claim to a British origin, for it is near akin to Gaelic, in Finistére and the Cotes du Nord very near indeed to Welsh, less so in Morbihan, but there the difference is more a matter of pronunciation than actual language, the people of Finistere say those of Morbihan speak a patois. The Basque language gives no clue to the origin of the race, it bears no affinity to any known language, with one solitary exception, so it is said, of the language spoken by a tribe living in a remote corner of Manchuria.

Away from the larger towns and the seaside resorts the Breton in his villages amongst the rough hills of the centre of the country, the Basqe in the narrow valleys of the Western Pyrennees still live their old simple agricultural lives, working contentedly from daylight to dark, day in day out, Sundays and festivals of the Church excepted.
Jean Cocteau
Authors: Balfour Mrs. Reginald
Published: July 2007

There is little to be said about Jean Cocteau that he has not said himself—about himself. ‘The last word in modernity, the most brilliant mind of this generation,’ said Clive Bell of him, and to be noticed by the capricious pen of that critic does indeed stamp him as ultra-modern.

As poet, critic, novelist, draughtsman, Jean Cocteau has been known in Paris for the last thirteen years, but owing to our regrettable isolation from movements and ideas beyond our own shores, we in England have hardly realised his many achievements. This year he has published Le Rappel a l’Ordre, a collection of former articles in which he analyses his activities as the leader of a group of young musicians and writers of the very latest modern tendencies, together with the motives and significances of his own writings. Another sign of his great activity was the production of his last play Orphée at the Théatre des Arts during four nights in last July. Two scenes of this attempt to clothe a classical theme in modern dress (he did the same in Andromaque and in the ballet Romeo and Juliet which has Strawinsky’s music) are given in the Revue des Jeunes of July 28th. It is a mere fragment, but in it are found all the ‘Cocteau’ elements, fantasy, mystère, modern implements (such as Death’s india-rubber gloves), symbolising elements in human life, besides much beauty of movement and charm of words. Respectfully criticising the play in The Times of July 14th, the writer speaks of M. Cocteau’s conversion as being ‘amongst the recent phenomena of Paris life.’
The ‘Action Francaise’ Condemnation
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

A French Catholic who holds a very influential position in the Catholic movement expressed to me a few weeks ago such strong views on the recent condemnation of the Action Francaise by Cardinal Andrieu, and subsequently by the Pope himself, that the gist of his argument is worth placing on record. He attached so much importance to the crisis which has been precipitated by the Cardinal’s condemnation that he believed it to mark the beginning of a phase which would lead, after a short period of acute crisis in France, to an immense consolidation of all the Catholic forces in this country, which have hitherto been divided hopelessly by the tendencies towards violent anti-constitutional action on the part of the neo-royalist movement.

The origin of the trouble may be briefly stated. It has been well known to everyone familiar with the various factors of the Catholic movement in France. Broadly speaking, the older generation of Catholics were, at the beginning of the present century, still largely royalist in their sympathies. The tradition of plunder and spoliation under the Republic still carried with it vivid memories for many people; and most of the older clergy and nearly all the Catholic aristocracy were still profoundly hostile to the Republic, which they regarded as being only the latest phase in the series of political crises through which France had passed since the Revolution, with alternating republics and monarchies. But by the beginning of the century it had become quite clear to those who viewed the situation without traditional and personal feelings that the restoration of the monarchy in France had become an impossibility.
William Cobbett on Birth Control
Authors: Standish M. A.
Published: July 2007

A Century ago, a violent controversy raged upon the subject of the limitation of the families of the poor; the two chief protagonists in this contest were the Rev. T. Malthus and William Cobbett. As the dispute has been revived during the present age, it is not without interest to re-trace the arguments of the debate.

In those days the fight centred upon the economic question; Malthus based his position upon the theory that population had a tendency to increase faster than subsistence; whilst Cobbett pointed out that under natural conditions there was ample means of providing for an increase in numbers in this country.

To-day, the question still remains of vast and vital importance, inasmuch as both advocates and opponents of Birth Control admit that married couples nowadays are compelled by reason of economic conditions to consider whether they can afford to maintain a family or not. Both Malthus and Cobbett agreed that modern industrial conditions were unsatisfactory in the extreme; Malthus desired to remedy social conditions by demanding that the proletariat should restrict the number of their children by means of ‘moral restraint’ and by this means increase the amount of food-supply available; Cobbett on the other hand regarded this demand as an outrage upon human liberty and saw in a return to natural conditions the only way out of the ‘impasse’ into which Industrialism had plunged the people of this country.

Malthus published his well-known treatise upon Population in 1816; this was largely read by the educated classes and its tenets supported by those who derived their wealth from the exploitation of the manual workers of this country.
St. Francis and the Franciscans in the British Museum
Authors: Steele Robert
Published: July 2007

The part played by Englishmen in the first days of the Franciscan Order seems small, and is perhaps obscured by the fact that its earliest historians were Italians to whom the nationality of their brethren had no importance. One is glad to think that one of the earliest of the followers of St. Francis, ‘secundus in or dine,’ whatever that may imply, and ‘socius beati Francisci,’ was William the Englishman, and that we have before us his beautiful drawing of Our Lord among the candlesticks which was brought to England to be preserved by Matthew Paris. Chroniclers of the Order say almost nothing about him, and the one legend that has attached itself to his name speaks of his sanctity and humility. One wonders how a travelling Englishman, even in that international age when a dialect of French carried one from England to Rome, had settled down in a little Italian hill town, so completely as to leave no memory of his nationality, especially if he was that ‘quidam de Assisio’ ‘secundus in or dine’ between Bernard of Quintevalle and Brother Giles. Or was his anonymity due to a touch of almost jealous affection in Brother Leo and the Companions? When he died in 1232, five years after St. Francis, he was buried in the great church of San Francesco at Assisi, and at once miracles began to be wrought at his tomb with such frequency that the Minister General came to his grave and ordered him in virtue of holy obedience to work no more.
Francis and Dominic in England
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

Fratres Minores sicut et nostri caritative et hilariter recipiantur, et secundum facultatem domus pie et honeste procurentur. (Constitutiones Ordinis Praedicatofum).

Let the Friars Minor be lovingly and cheerfully welcomed as our own brethren, and let them be worshipfully and fittingly entertained according to the means of the house.

The love which St. Francis and St. Dominic bore each other has become a lasting tradition and example among their children. The rule of special charity towards the Minors was one of the last legacies of St. Dominic to his Preachers; it is to be found in the Constitutions drawn up by him and approved by the General Chapter held at Bologna in 1221 a short time before the Saint’s death. At the same Chapter was decreed the foundation of the English Dominican Province, and straightway St. Dominic carried it into effect by sending from his side fit friars for the undertaking. Filled with the holy Founder’s own spirit they arrived in England in August, 1221, and were already settled in London and Oxford when in 1224 the Blessed Agnellus came with the first Minors. Mindful of St. Dominic’s rule of love, the London Dominicans eagerly welcomed the newcomers and made them tarry with them fifteen days, feeding and lodging them as though they were of their own family.

From London two Franciscans went to establish a house of their Order in Oxford, and Thomas of Eccleston, an early chronicler, has told the story of their coming.
A Prayer
Authors: Croft-Cooke. Rupert
Published: July 2007

Lord—at a mountain tomb in Bethany

Once Thou didst stand, and with the word ‘Come forth’

Raised Lazarus to the quick. And stumbling he Pathetically raised protecting hands Because the sun was strong. They loosed the bands That bound his buried limbs. Before their eyes In wonder, jealousy, or fear that gazed Young Lazarus stood, and heard their startled cries, And saw his Lord smile welcome, and with dazed Senses he wondered what new dream was this;

Then the world faded as he knelt to kiss Thy feet . . .

Lord—see this sepulchre that keeps my soul And call forth the dead self that tarries there,

Send angel hands, that they in pity roll The stone away, and at Thy word let rise This buried self, that with new life and care May learn to kiss Thy feet, and meet Thine eyes.

Rupert Croft-Cooke.
Burneyana
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Only the other day, we stood looking at the desolate spot in St. Martin’s Street, once occupied by the happy home of the Burneys, and Dr. Johnson’s dictum about that gifted family came to our mind : I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, and one or two I hardly know, I love on credit.’ And lo! on returning from our stroll, we found this new and valuable volume of Burneyana with those very words inscribed on its title-page. Mr. Brimley Johnson, who has already delved to such good purpose in eighteenth century quarries, here gives us a delightful miscellany. It is made up of hitherto unused material from manuscript journals and correspondence, and from contemporary newspapers, and the result is a ‘full-length family group’ of all the Burneys. By far the best part of the book consists of a reproduction of the suppressed passages in Madame d’Arblay’s Journal during her stay in France in 1802 and the succeeding years. These are full of interest, and in their vividness are well worthy of one who was at once the greatest diarist and all but the greatest novelist of her period.

The editor in his introduction rightly praises Fanny Burney’s incomparable literary picture-painting, and extols her as perhaps the shrewdest observer of human nature who ever created fictions in the likeness of man. In 1802, Bonaparte was on the eve of the Consulate for Life, and Paris presented a curious spectacle, of which we are here given many glimpses. While some of the entries are of a very intimate character, others were written to be read to Queen Charlotte and her daughters at Windsor, and are therefore of the full-dress order.
Jean-Marie
Authors: Clegg Mary
Published: July 2007

There has just left the Grotto at Lourdes, never to return to it, an old man who has been inseparable from it for over fifty years, and who will always be inseparable from it in the thoughts of countless pilgrims from every part of the world who have visited it in that long period. Perhaps no contemporary Catholic layman has had so many personal friends. This old man, who has just died in his ninetieth year, is Jean-Marie Laffont, die elder of the two Guardians of the Grotto, ‘the old candleman,’ he whose majestic head reminds one so forcibly of portraits of our own Cardinal Newman.

He was born at Poueyferre, a little village on the summit of a hill a few kilometres to the north-west of Lourdes. His family were well-to-do peasant proprietors, with a charming property which went down to the Lac de Lourdes. He was the eldest of a family of twelve children, and he and his brothers and sisters grew up in sight of the town with which he will be eternally associated. In those days village children were not worried with much instruction. If they learned to read and write, it was something of a marvel, but they certainly knew their catechism. Jean-Marie would spend most of his time helping about his father’s land, driving the cattle and the pigs to pasture, leading the sheep, going to market with the ox-waggon, and becoming astute in barter and rich in wisdom. He took the abundant corn from their rich lands to be ground in Lourdes by a miller named Soubirous— rather a slack and undependable but amiable person and one in need of help for the sake of his wife and children. The eldest child, Bernadette, was an asthmatic little thing, needing care and getting little of it.
Friend, Go Up Higher
Authors: Delany Bernard
Published: July 2007

The thirteenth century was without a doubt the golden age in the history of the Order of Friars-Preachers. Great men in the Order were so numerous that you could not possibly tick them off on your fingers as you might the eminent names in any other sphere or age. You might just as well try to sort out the leaves that strew the brooks of Vallombrosa, or count the waves in the sea or the stars in the sky. Perhaps that is why so many great names are so little remembered. Memory breaks down under its burden. The thickly-clustered constellation creates one luminous blaze and the single stars are lost in the glare.

Perhaps you have never heard of John of Vercelli precisely because his brilliance has been—no, not eclipsed, but absorbed in the steady glow of his shining contemporaries. Who, then, you may well ask, was this Dominican star?

The Blessed Father John of Vercelli was the sixth Master General of the Order. Both time and place of his birth are doubtful, and, indeed, very little is known of his early years. But we know that he died at Montpellier in 1283, and we gather, therefore, that, even if he ever set eyes on St. Dominic, it must have been unreflecting baby eyes or the solemn eyes of very eariy boyhood. Anyhow, if he had never met St. Dominic in person, he early came under the spell of Dominic’s sons, and was caught up in the stupendous movement Dominic had started. We know for certain that, before he became a Friar, John taught Canon Law in the University of Paris. Now, no man at any university in the Middle Ages could by any possibility help seeing and hearing Friars-Preachers.
The French Catholic Counter-Attack
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

In an article in Blackfriars some months back, describing the circumstances that led up to the condemnation of the Action Frangaise by Cardinal Andrieu, which has since been followed by a formal promulgation by the Pope of the condemnation of the Action Frangaise which was decided upon early in 1914, I quoted the opinion of certain French Catholics who believed that the condemnation would, after a difficult tussle, result in a great strengthening of the Catholic forces in the country. Subsequent developments have, I believe, very considerably confirmed that view. With one exception there has been no apparent breach in the solidarity of the French hierarchys approval of Cardinal Andrieus action. And since the Pope has formally taken up the matter, and especially in view of the open defiance of the Holy See by the Action F rangaise leaders and their newspaper, it would be absurd to suggest that even the Bishop of Montaubanwho at most only expressed his opinion that the first moves in the condemnation were no more than a serious warning against its tendencieshas any mental reservations whatever on the matter.

Needless to say, there has been a great commotion over the condemnation. Some, prominent Catholics have even gone so far as to express openly their conviction that the Pope has been misled by pro-German influences, notwithstanding the fact that the recent condemnation does little more than promulgate a condemnation which was already confirmed by Pope Pius X and Pope Benedict XV more than ten years ago.
The Flemish Primitives at Burlington House
Authors: Bowen Francis J.
Published: July 2007

The Exhibition of Flemish Art on view at the Royal Academy should not be missed by any lover of art. Not only will he there find a feast of colour and beauty sufficient to satisfy the most fastidious, but a complete exhibition of the art of Flanders from its earliest beginnings to the present day. It is seldom so representative an exhibition of the art of a nation in all its periods is available for the student to note its entire origin, growth and development. But more. The exhibition should not be missed by any student of Christian economics, especially any Catholic student. For here he has an unparalleled object-lesson of the effect of the Churchs social influence on the world when her guidance and direction were acknowledged. The display of masterpieces in painting alone is so superb that, as one writer in the daily press was led to exclaim : there are times when one is tempted to cry out that painting began and ended with the early Flemish artists. But painting was only one of the arts brought to perfection by the Church in the Middle Ages; Flanders only one of the nations of Europe under the influence of the cultural tradition of Latin Christendom. Painting may have blossomed earlier in Flanders and Italy than among the other nations of Europe, owing to their more flourishing commerce and intercourse with the East; but all were in the same line of tradition and cultural development until destroyed by the disruptive influences of the Reformation with its subsequent confusion of ideas from which we still suffer: and only a return to unity can heal the wounds of society.
Rubaiyat
Authors: Rice Cyprian
Published: July 2007

A Loaf of bread, a cup of wineand Thou Before us, where the Priest stands for Thee now, Thy hand shall take our gifts, Thy voice shall bless, And one low mass were paradise enow!

This morn some angel muezzin called from far: Come! for the radiance of the Morning Star Hath lit the altar stone, and thou shouldst be Girt in His Presence, where His courtiers are.

The earthly hope men set their hearts upon Turns ashesor it prospers, and anon,

Like snow upon the deserts dusty face,

Lighting a little hour or two, is gone

But this sky-born desire that fires thy clay Dawns from a clime out-topping night and day, And though the symbols too, like snow, depart, The everlasting Spirit comes to stay.

Bring then the Cup wherein that Blood was poured, Which Mary ministered and then adored;

Thou seest but a wafer and small wine:

Take courage, tis a God that sets the board.

And that high Love that died in penury,

To rise again with wealth for thee and me,

Shall teach thee how, from een such scanty fare, Love makes a banquet where all joys run free.

Cyprian Rice, O.P,