bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gregorian Chant on the Gramophone
Authors: Durnford G. M.
Published: July 2007

It is probable that many students of liturgy and plainsong shared the scepticism of the present writer on hearing that successful gramophone records had been taken of the chant of the Benedictine Fathers at Solesmes. The gramophone. Yes, we knew it had been vastly improved in recent years, and even before the war, on account of the accuracy of its tempo, we remembered welcoming the day when it superseded the unfortunate pianist thumping in his corner after the carpet had been rolled back for an impromptu dance in the long dining room at home. On those and other occasions, however, considerations of tone and timbre were secondary. Then we thought of later records of orchestral pieces—very successful except for a certain hardness which mattered nothing to the brass but lost a good deal to the strings—and lastly, we recalled less successful vocal items in which the human touch was sorely sacrificed to mechanical accuracy.

And this latest announcement led to reflection on the chant as the monks sing it. We listened again in imagination to the fine diction of the syllabic recitative, the subdued yet thunderous might of the unison, and felt the rhythm as a tenuous pervading atmosphere, which the singers did not create, but rather glided into, as swimmers might into a moving tide. The prayer-spirit which brooded and hovered and soared and sang, could one conceive of it caged up in a machine, however marvellous? Emphatically no.
The False Fruits of Modern Democracy
Authors: Fox S. F. Darwin
Published: July 2007

One of the chief characteristics of our time is the growing supremacy of quantity over quality. The latter is being ousted by the former in politics, in culture, in all departments of our civilisation. This struggle can, of course, have various disguises, and it can take place on several planes. Even the most conspicuous mass-movement may not necessarily be directed by quantitative valuations; or it may be first prompted by higher impulses and only later adopt a purely quantitative tendency. And a growing tendency of this kind is noticeable in the whole of modern ‘egalitarian’ democracy. This does not mean that democracy is altogether devoid of ideals, but that its ideals—provided there still be any—are on the wrong plane : on the plane of mere economic factors and of class-struggle, which not only conceal but invariably distort all deeper (ethical and spiritual) considerations. Its ultimate vision is not so much a dignified but a comfortable life : not the complete Christian Man, but the standardised Universal Bourgeois ruthlessly controlled by his equally standardised ‘comrades.’

There is, of course, nothing easier or more seductive than reducing everything to ‘economic factors.’ Moreover it has the virtue of simplifying all problems to such an extent as to explain the whole mystery of life in a sixpenny pamphlet which everyone can carry in his pocket. But a valuation of life as a whole under the auspices of economic factors alone puts the cart before the horse : it makes both life and mankind only an appendage to economics.
Charlotte Bronte Goes to Confession
Authors: O’Byrne Cathal
Published: July 2007

Charlotte Bronte’s father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, was born in Ireland on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1777, at Emdale, near Rathfriland, in the County Down. His father, Charlotte’s grandfather, Hugh Prunty—his Scotch Presbyterian neighbours called him Brunty—came from somewhere in the south of Ireland, but where exactly his paternal home was he could never ascertain. When he was twenty-two he made a runaway match with Alice McClorey of Ballynaskeagh, a neighbouring townland. Alice McClorey was a Catholic, and her brother, with whom she lived, and her relatives were much opposed to the marriage, which took place secretly in the Protestant church of Magherally. After a brief honeymoon the young people returned to live in a two-roomed thatched cottage at Emdale, near Rathfriland, where ten children were subsequently born to them, and all of them were brought up Protestants.

The eldest son, Patrick, shortly after entering Cambridge in the year 1802, changed his name from Branty, the name signed in the Register of the University, to Bronte. Prior to that time there were no Brontes in Ireland. Being an Ulsterman, although born of a Catholic mother, the Rev. Patrick Bronte was of the ultra-Protestant type so peculiar to the North-East corner of Ireland. A speech against Catholic Emancipation was his one venture into the arena of the politics of his time. To the members of his family he passed on a legacy of intolerance, but, of the three sisters, to judge from their writings, Charlotte seems to have inherited more than her share of it.
The Rock of Saint Aaron
Authors: Balfour M. C.
Published: July 2007

The town of Saint-Malo is well known to the tourists who land there on their way to Paramé or Dinard or the remoter summer haunts of Lower Brittany. Well known at least externally, and as to its more obvious features—the old walls, the single pointing spire, the great castle of the Duchess Anne, the beautiful surrounding waters—but scarcely at all beyond these. And yet there is much to know for those who care to look for it; a whole world, as it were, of history, of tradition, of by-ways that lead into a rather wonderful past.

There is, for instance, a very ancient and picturesque quarter not far from the Cathedral, yet only to be reached by twisting alleys and narrow lanes, where you will pass by the Cour La Houssaye; this is no more than a widening of the way, a little airier than its surroundings, perhaps, but not so important as its name would convey. Yet here stands the House of the Duchess Anne, where she lodged before she carried the white Ermines of Brittany into the shield of France; a haunted place, as the old grandmothers will tell you, with its ancient walls, its turret stair and the window whence she saw the Rider on the White Horse .... but that is another story and not the one that I wish to tell you to-day. So we will pass on and, threading these tortuous ways, come presently to a narrow quiet street at the end of which stands the House of the Dames-de-Saint-Aaron and behind it the little chapel—very rarely open to visitors—which is the real core and heart of the city, and to every Malouin, doubly, trebly, sacred ground.
Never Tire of Doing Good
Authors: Montgomery Francis
Published: July 2007

A peasant proprietor had two sons. The elder was impressed for military service and sent to America, where he had to remain for many years. On his return he found his father dead and his brother rich in the possession of all the family property. He went, therefore, to his brother’s house, and to his question, ‘Don’t you know me?’ he received for reply only a surly ‘No.’ When he humbly made himself known, his brother told him to go to the granary, and there in the loft he would find an old chest, which was all his father had left him in his will; and with that the uncouth brother turned on his heel and left him without further welcome.

Our traveller, therefore, went up to the loft and found there only an old worm-eaten chest. ‘What in the world,’ said he to himself, ‘can I do with this rotten old box? However, blessed be the will of God ! it will perhaps do to make a fire with,’ for it was winter and extremely cold. He, therefore, put it on his back and, returning to his lodgings, borrowed an axe, and, as he was chopping it up, he came on a piece of paper which was behind a secret sliding panel at the bottom. He took it up and, reading it, found it to be a receipt for a large sum of money deposited on loan by his father. On presentation the sum was given up to him, so that now he was rich.
St. Joan and the Dominicans
Authors: Carter Barbara Barclay
Published: July 2007

On the 19th of February, 1431, when St. Joan had lain near three months in the dungeon of Rouen Castle and the preliminaries for her trial were already completed, Bishop Cauchon summoned the Dominican Jean Lemaitre, Vice-Inquisitor of Rouen, to become his fellow in judging the Maid.

In dismay, evidently realising the irregularity of the whole proceeding, the Vice-Inquisitor takes refuge in a technicality: the trial, though held in Rouen, is considered as taking place in Cauchon’s diocese of Beauvais, whereas his own jurisdiction comprises Rouen only.

Thereupon Cauchon has recourse to the Inquisitor, Lemaitre’s superior, then absent. ‘I pray your Venerable Paternity,’ he writes, ‘summoning and requiring ... that you should come immediately to this town ... Or if you are detained by business so important as to give a real excuse for delay, please at least delegate Brother Jean Lemaitre in your stead . . . .’

Such language argues considerable coercive power. The Inquisitor seems to jump at the plea of other business, but from the 13th of March the Vice-Inquisitor Lemaitre must take his place at Cauchon’s side— though such tardy participation should have been sufficient to invalidate the whole trial.

‘He was forced to come in,’ Nicholas de Houppeville would testify thereafter, ‘he was a prey to great fears. I saw him greatly perplexed and perturbed during the case.’ Lemaitre’s conscience must have sometimes troubled him, for it was he himself who told Houppeville that Joan had complained of the brutality of her gaolers—a brutality it was his own duty to prevent, or rather, to render impossible by removing her to an ecclesiastical prison.
The Hill of Carthage
Authors: Belloc Elizabeth
Published: July 2007

In the sunlit evening I saw a little railway which led out of Tunis on the north: a railway which looked too young and small to be able to go very far, but which would be almost certain to go to some enchanted place. And sure enough, when I asked for a ticket as far as possible I was given a ticket for Tunis: the train was of the kind that does a magic circle. It started, and at once it seemed to run into heaven without further delay; the town vanished and the sky lay under us as well as over us, luminous and blue and flecked with rosy clouds. After the first airy vision this undersky turned out tobeawide shallow lake stretching away to the eastward, with flocks of rosy flamingoes standing motionless in the blue water. They stood there like the clouds of sunset, perfectly still, and entirely happy, wrapped up in some lovely dream of their own.

On the other side of the lake was a hill of bare red earth crowned by a big white mosque. The train left the lake and in a little while came to the southernmost point of the promontory, where the green waves of the Mediterranean broke on the sand; then it began to turn on its circle and came to a place called Ste. Monique, where cherry trees in snow-white bloom fluttered everywhere against the red earth of the hills. Behind them a cliff-head rose above the sea, with a white Arab village crowded upon its crest. Then the train stopped on a hillside among a few villas and cornfields, and the station placard said in huge white letters, CARTHAGE. The letters needed to be huge and white, as if to emphasise a truth very difficult to believe. It simply did not seem possible.
The Making of Europe
Authors: Charles-Edwards T.
Published: July 2007

In his study of the Dark Ages, Mr. Dawson has done a difficult thing with entire success. What is nearly as interesting is the apparently effortless way in which he has achieved his end. Instead of as a formless waste of barbarism and decay, such as is often presented by the merely secular historian, the Dark Ages are viewed as the essentially formative period of European history, when the foundations were being slowly and painfully laid. Though superficially the period lacks the attractions of what are usually considered the great epochs of history, yet the age that saw the laying of great foundations of European culture has an interest that is all its own. Foundation-stones, if less showy, are more necessary than flying buttresses.

The political existence of Europe depends on the Roman Empire; it has little, if any, geographical warrant. A society of city states, the inheritors of the Hellenistic culture, was welded together by the military dictatorship of the Roman tradition. It is no mere figure of speech to call Caesar and Augustus the founders of the European polity, for the barbarians, though possessed of valuable cultural traditions, were of themselves incapable of producing a higher civilisation. It was Rome with her genius for constructive and sustained toil which was to bring this to pass. Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.
The Rule of Genius
Authors: Darwin Fox S. F.
Published: July 2007

In an age triumphant in mechanism, thought tends to run on mechanical lines—on railway lines, in fact. Sometimes we refer, with a pitying smile, to the Victorian idea of progress, which had as its favourite text ‘Go from strength to strength,’ and which was admirably epitomised by Tennyson, the characteristic Victorian poet, in such phrases as :

‘Forward, forward let us range,Let the great world spin for ever‘Adown the ringing groves of change’;

or:

‘Men may rise on stepping-stonesOf their dead selves to higher things’;

or a world

‘Where freedom slowly broadens downFrom precedent to precedent.’

All very tidy, orderly, and regular. And all very ridiculous ....

We tend to smile at all this now. We now describe ‘progress’ as rhythmic; and a rhythm has its ups and downs, its systole and diastole, its oscillations. Nevertheless, the theory of evolution still binds us with its spell, though some of the Germans are beginning to question it. ‘We are all evolutionists nowadays,’ in ‘progressive’ circles, that is; and we do not usually import German thought until it has become a bit stale in the country of its origin ....
The Wireless in Court
Authors: Allnutt E. F.
Published: July 2007

It was recently reported in the Press that Judge H. W. Falk, of Los Angeles, had granted permission for microphones to be installed in the witness-box and at counsels’ table in his court in order that the trial for murder of a former District Attorney might be broadcasted.

An innovation so profoundly affecting the conduct of courts of law gives rise to questions which concern intimately the judicature, the radio and the general public. It is true that the case in point hails from the United States, where the judicial atmosphere is less rarefied than it is in this country, and where restraint in matters of jurisprudence is not a particularly salient characteristic of public affairs. Its significance lies in its being the first indication that wireless threatens to invade a department of public life which has hitherto been regarded as sacrosanct, as much, one believed, by common consent, whether for reasons based on sentiment or public expediency, as, privately, on grounds of good taste. Although there does not at present appear to be any likelihood of the occasion at Los Angeles being cited as a precedent for similar action in this country, it marks an appropriate moment in which to review certain aspects of broadcasting with which considerations affecting public policy and decorum are closely bound up.
Sailors and Swimmers
Authors: Mégroz R. L.
Published: July 2007

In England we find the summer useful as an excuse for jokes about the wintry weather, but it may be safely assumed that there is some sort of difference between winter and summer: otherwise, how should we get strawberries and cream in July and not even want them in January? Summer may be regarded as beyond a joke sometimes, but it is also more than a joke if but strawberries and cream be the happy memory it conjures up into renewed pleasure. To some people it means more even than this; maybe tramping over the green hills or loitering in sun-splashed woods. To others the summer is most pleasantly companioned by the sea, but the ways in which they respond to its briny flavour form the gravamen of these curious observations which follow.

Perhaps you remember one of Robert Browning’s lyrical ruminations that tells how he swam out a long way from the seashore on a sunny day. He was peacefully floating on his back when he saw a flittering white butterfly above him in the sunlight. The poem makes a pretty picture, but to any swimmer it appeals more than any picture. For there is a whole world of exhilarating contacts belonging to those whose love of the sea is not confined to an admiration of its appearance, or an appreciation of the salubrious properties of ozone. Therefore, swimmers in general must be distinguished from that other big group of sea-lovers, whose pleasure is rather in ‘those water-trampling ships which made me glow,’ to quote the English Laureate, who seems to owe something to Wordsworth’s ‘trampling waves.’
Belgium and the Child Delinquent
Authors: Valerio Edith
Published: July 2007

It may appear strange to those unacquainted with social organization in France and Belgium to learn that the latter country has left the former decades behind in the curing of crime. While France is only just waking up to the necessity of coping with the appalling crimes, daily reported, of youthful criminals and with the cases of cruelty to young children by their natural protectors—a factor which partly accounts for the first evil—Belgium has for over twenty years tackled the question of the protection of childhood and the proper provision for caring for and re-educating deficient and abnormal children. The efforts being made to rescue children from the almost inevitable career of crime and degradation to which vicious surroundings and congenital infirmities have driven them is one of the most admirable examples of practical idealism in the present age, and places Belgium in the front rank as a civilizing agent of humanity.

From the period of the crêche to the kindergarten stage, the dossier of every child rescued by the Oeuvre de la Protection de l'Enfance and its various co-operating organizations is carefully preserved with the report of any necessary curative or corrective treatment applied. When the period of school education arrives (compulsory from the age of 8 to 14), the process of segregation is virtually accomplished; the normal and the abnormal child are separately classified. The latter is assigned to a special class, the classe des anormaux, which is attached to the great public schools and conducted’ by teachers trained for that particular purpose.
Careem for Boys
Authors: Richings Ronald
Published: July 2007

The choice of a career for his son is, in general, a problem of great perplexity for a man, and, often, one which he is ill equipped to manage. He probably makes large sacrifices to defray the cost of a ‘good education,’ and is liable finally to sacrifice his boy’s chances of happiness and success by an injudicious decision about his future. His difficulties may be increased, curiously enough, by his failure to realise that conditions of entry into a career are radically different from what they were thirty or forty years ago. He perhaps is still sufficiently romantic to talk about, and even to believe in, the ‘self-made man’ ideal, although the impracticability of it in these days of combines and over-population is surely manifest. Or he is likely to adopt one of two favourite attitudes; either, that his personal experience of the exigencies of his own calling determines him not to allow his son to follow it, or that the only reasonable thing for a son to do is to step into his father’s shoes and continue the work built up for him. If he is neither romantic nor obstinate, he will consult his son’s inclinations and, in all probability, he will find them either fantastic or completely unformed.

A normal boy rarely shows a marked aptitude for one particular business or profession in his early or middle school-days, and if he forms an opinion about his future it is usually much influenced by a limited knowledge of his father’s occupation.
A Dominican Tragedy
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice
Published: July 2007

That the murderer of Henry III was Jacques Clément, a Jacobin friar, is certain, although soon after the event some were inclined to doubt whether the miscreant were a Jacobin or no in spite of his habit. The extraordinary story ran that Clément was put up for the night by the Proctireur Général de la Guesle and there murdered in order to obtain his habit to disguise the real assassin, who was a soldier. It is not necessary to kill a man to obtain the habit of a religious and at that time the environs of Paris swarmed with every kind of Order. Again, why a Dominican? Was the Procureur Général especially anxious to make a case against that Order as well as to murder his King? In short the story is incredible in every way and could only have arisen owing to the fact that Clément was killed on the spot. De la Guesle called out that he was not to be injured, although he himself had knocked the assassin down, with a view, of course, for torture to discover who were behind him.

The facts are that Clément exhibited two passports, one of which was forged, when he came to St. Cloud saying that he was an escaped royalist with vital news for the King. Quite early in the morning the friar was introduced to Henry and dealt him a blow which proved fatal within twenty-four hours. By a strange fatality the King had only put on a chamois vest under the violet coat which he always wore, instead of the cuirasse which would be the usual dress during a campaign.
The Boom of Youth
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

Those novels about the Young Idea versus Crabbed Old Age, those films about Our Dancing Daughters, those Boy-Scout Jamborees, that Hiking Movement, that Slimming Campaign, that ‘Beaver’ Ramp, those foolish letters to the papers from alleged old colonels about the spinelessness and cocktails of the younger generation, those nostrums for preserving the School-girl Complexion, that glorification of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, those prodigies of Jehudi Menuhin, those babblings of Gertrude Stein, that smile of Mr. Drage, that shortening of skirts and bobbing of hair, those Nazis and Fascists and Bright Young People—perhaps you did not even see a connexion between these things? And, so far as the newspaper stunts were concerned, perhaps you did not take them seriously at all? Or are you one of the crétins who swallow the whole thing?

Now Mr. Wyndham Lewis takes it all very seriously indeed. He has written a book about it which claims to be a ‘research, as “scientific” as any branch whatever of biology or chemistry.’ He has made a valuable collection of this nonsense from the press, but he does not regard it as nonsense. He sees a Sinister Purpose behind it all. The gigantic ‘Youth-racket’ of these post-war years is a put-up job. It is a machination of Big Business in its bid for power. It is baby-snatching on a large scale for the enslavement of Western Man.
Medicine and Mumbo-Jumbo
Authors: Underwood Spencer
Published: July 2007

In 1546 occurred the great plague which ravaged Marseilles, Lyons, and Aix. So terrible was the scourge that all the doctors fled and left the dying to their fate. The Comités of the towns assembled in despair, ignorant even whether they too were not already in the grip of the disease. Just as the inhabitants of Elatea received the news in the eventide, so the desertion of the doctors struck their bewildered minds with horror. Although they turned to the Church with groans of supplication, the people died, and dying gave to their neighbours the seeds of death. They died as they had died in the past, and they continued to die until the world of medicine perceived the squalor of their living. And it is of this dawning perception that I wish to speak.

The plagues which ravaged the world in the course of the Middle Ages were probably all offshoots of that form of plague known as Bubonic, Oriental, Levantine, or Miliary, and the symptoms were a high fever, accompanied by glandular swellings and carbuncles. It was generally supposed to have originated in Northern Africa, and to have made its first appearance in Europe at Constantinople in the reign of Justinian. The great plague of Athens described by Thucydides seems from its symptoms to have been of a different nature, although equally destructive. In Constantinople, ten thousand persons were carried off in one day; in 1352 Oxford lost two-thirds of her academic population ; at about the same period thirteen millions perished in China from the same disease.
Grenada: 1832–1932
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

On the Feast of the Assumption in the year 1498 Columbus discovered this island and called it Conception Island. But it was not till two hundred years had passed that resident missionaries, French Dominicans, were established, as we learn from Père du Tertre and the famous Père Labat, in their accounts of those early days, 1651-1657. During two intervals they were replaced by Capuchins, 1657-1663 and 1763-1784, and by a series of secular priests, French, Irish and Spanish, till the English Dominicans formally took over the mission in 1901. So long as the French occupied the island its Catholic history was peaceful, but when the British seized it in 1762, and again, after an interval of French occupation, secured it finally in 1783, the Catholic Church in the island entered on a long period of storm and trouble. The whole forms a dramatic picture which is well set out by Fr. Devas, who has for years been occupied with the history of the island, and who has spared no pains in accumulating materials for its compilation.

Ecclesiastically the island was under the jurisdiction of the Vicars Apostolic, Challoner, Talbot, Douglass and Poynter, up to 1819, when the West Indian Diocese was erected and Dr. Buckley was appointed as first Vicar Apostolic with his residence in Trinidad. But long before that date troubles had arisen. The British regime started well—on paper : Catholics were to be Members of the Council, one was to be assistant Judge and one on the Commission of Peace in each town or parish.
A Response to the Problem of the Cinema
Authors: Allaert Valentyn
Published: July 2007

The purpose of this article is to give some idea of the way in which Catholics in Belgium are attempting to deal with one of the most influential forces of our time—the Cinema. Under the stimulus and direction of the Dominican Father Felix Morlion, they have evolved a method which is at once intelligent and eminently successful. In England very little has as yet been done; and this brief survey may be of interest to those who realise the importance and urgency of the problem.

The rise of the film to its present status of universal predominance is surely unique in its rapidity. Between 1887 and 1889 Edison invented a toy, the Kinetoscope; you looked through its peephole and saw a series of pictures of somebody who was moving, awkwardly moving, it was true, but moving. The toy became popular; but it had this limitation, only one person could peep at a time. This restriction inevitably provoked the idea of projecting the pictures on to a screen by means of some sort of magic lantern, thus making them visible to a roomful of people. The instrument was made, and the first Vitascope was shown on Broadway in 1895. It met with immediate success: the Cinema, as we know it, had begun.
The Japanese Crisis
Authors: Anstice E. H.
Published: July 2007

In less than eighteen months Japan has lost two premiers, one from each of the two major political parties, to assassins’ bullets; a cabinet minister of high rank has perished in the same way; so has a leading industrialist. Baron Wawatsuki, ex-premier and leader of the Minseito, has had an attempt made on his life, other prominent men have been threatened. The victims, it will be noticed, are not confined to one political complexion, or to any one department of life. One might almost be excused for believing some malignant spirit to have suddenly seized on the country, but, demoniacal possession being nowadays hardly a tenable political theory, some other explanation must be sought for these crimes. It is not sufficient to put them down to the peculiar obliquity of mental vision which makes the Japanese condone assassination if patriotic motives are alleged in excuse. Political murder has not been uncommon in Japan; there have been cases before where misguided individuals have felt that their country’s good demanded the removal of a particular person, but they were the isolated acts of solitary fanatics. Here there is a series; an organized body, the ‘Blood Brotherhood,’ has been at work. We must, therefore, look deeper, and examine the unrest and ferment of which these acts are a manifestation.

Japan to-day is in a state of flux, largely as a result of the sudden impact of Western ideas on a society that was essentially static. Seventy years ago she was a feudal state, her society was one of fixed ranks and gradations, her economy was mainly agricultural, industry was still in the handicraft stage, the population was stationary.
Pleasure-Extract
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Man is a vegetable, but something more; and so it would be a mistake to try to write his life in terms only of the gropings of a plant for nourishment. He is an animal, but something more; and so his activity cannot always be explained as an instinctive response to a particular situation and a search for sensuous satisfaction. His vegetable and animal functions may fill almost all his time and occupy the foreground of his attention. But it is the flickering moment of deliberation and the lurking moment of reason that chiefly engage our notice in any discussion of a specially human problem of conduct.

Such as contraception. Even so, the problem may be considered from various angles—medical, psychological, economic, political, historical, artistic. But ultimately the scientific discussion resolves itself into a question of philosophy. Anybody who has dipped into the literature of the subject will recall how quickly and how constantly the idea of right or wrong crops up. Most people, I suppose, in the face of a personal problem of conduct, apply the test of principles that attempt some sort of approximation to the fundamental nature and decencies of things. Other considerations have their place, but the last word on contraception belongs to that science which deals with human affairs at this depth.

This science is called ethics. Unfortunately, the word has come to suggest an arbitrary collection of prohibitions and grudging permissions, some rather stupid to our brave new world of scientific humanism, all rather galling.
After Summer
Authors: Mégroz R. L.
Published: July 2007

Some people seem to thrust a disappointment aside, as one brushes mud from clothes; their attitude agrees with the saying that it is a poor coat that will not bear brushing, but it is possible that they never envisage the amount of brushing that a life-time calls for. Others can find a cynical satisfaction in disappointment: it affords support to pessimistic expectations, for one of the strangest possibilities of the human mind is to feel a disappointment that was halfexpected, and then to salvage a pleasure from contemplating bewrecked schemes. Such a hardness of the mind is a defensive armour of dangerous heaviness, and it may become the permanent covering of the spirit—a prison rather than a vesture.

Disappointments in a sequence accumulate a power of destruction which only a corresponding growth of resilience or a developing fortitude can counteract. Infinitely various are the means by which we evade or overcome the worst malignities of Fate. On the chessboard of life, whereon We range the black pieces of Despair and the white pieces of Hope, the most transparent cheating will satisfy us: White must win, of course. The first move is with Hope and the last also must be, or who would play this game? The calendar serves us well as a team umpire, though it can be a little stubborn soon after midsummer. Every twelvemonth the conventional division of time gives capital letters to a new year. This is as good as restoring the Queen to Hope; for what else is a New Year but to encourage Hope?
Lay Thoughts Upon Religious Art
Authors: Bennigsen Olga
Published: July 2007

The condition of contemporary religious art is by no means satisfactory. Periodically the question is raised in the local Catholic Press and discussed from various angles and points of view; letters pour in defending or attacking a certain aspect of modern ecclesiastical art; for a time the correspondence waxes hot, then gradually fizzes out; and all remains as it was, to the apathetic indifference of the great majority of Catholics and the intense disgust of an artistically-minded minority.

It is the limit of presumption for one who is neither an artist, nor a writer, nor a thinker, to broach a subject which has been so ably and exhaustively discussed by competent authorities, therefore this paper is offered with apologies for what it is—the thoughts of an average lay-woman interested in art upon this acutely controversial matter.

It would seem that besides the too obvious truism that ‘a work of religious art has to be religious,’ some principle must form the basis of religious art. We imagine that M. Maritain (Quelques réfléxions sur l'Art Religieux. Art et Scolastique, p. 216) expresses this essential principle when he says:

‘. . .it (religious art) is primarily intended for the instruction of the people, it is a theology in images, and an art which is illegible, obscure’ ; that is, not understood by the people, ‘is as senseless as a house without a staircase or a cathedral without a portal.’

Mediaeval frescoes and statues were the Bible of the illiterate, and their object was not only decorative but instructive.
Communism and the Catholic Apologist
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

We deplore the spread of communism as much as we disapprove of much of the inept propaganda which seeks to combat it. I do not refer to the patently discreditable propaganda associated with certain phases of Capitalism so much as to the ingenuous claptrap of respectable journals which, apart from the disrepute attaching to the quotation of doubtful statistics, sins solely by debility. I am not concerned with the advisability of the religious apologist’s carefully abstaining from polemic which may be too easily mistaken for partisan political thought; nor am I involved in anything beyond a thesis based on the urgent necessity of a mutual unobstructed apprehension on the part of Catholic and Communist—of a better understanding generally of two great world influences, Catholicism and Communism.

Slight as is his real appreciation of the Church, the educated Bolshevik has greater superficial knowledge of Catholicism than has the average Catholic of applied communism (a recent experiment from which he is geographically more or less remote) or of a communist theory which is buried in tomes of an abstruseness beyond his patience. To the Western mind in the mass the Bolshevik is a rather remarkable combination of two extreme opposites. He is represented as a combination of incredible cunning and fatuousness. His propaganda, we are told, is, in its astuteness, the first step to a communist diabolarchy; but we are left to infer that he is practically incapable of intellectual process, or, if he engages at all in dispute he is to be demolished by arguments that would discredit a school debating society.
Faith and Society
Authors: Manson Aelfric
Published: July 2007

What are the relations between Christianity and the social order, between the Church and those societies in which men live? Sometimes the Church is blamed because she has not solved effectively the many evils which afflict organised humanity, because she has not stopped war, for instance, or issued a remedy for the unemployment problem. Sometimes, on the contrary, her teaching with regard to current questions is disdained’ as either too medieval or too corrupt to be of use. In any case, the assumption is there; she should have something to say to enlighten a world in darkness. Another factor that has increased the demand for a statement of the implications of Christian principles is the emergence of a new and formidable political and economic force, equipped with a fighting doctrine. Communism, with its practical and apparently successful realization in Soviet Russia, is a challenge not only to the capitalistic societies to which it is formally opposed, but also to the basic ideas which have formed the Christian tradition. Lenin, of course, identified the two and saw in religion nothing but a support and sanction of the dominant regime: for him as for Karl Marx it was simply ‘dope for the people.’ The fact that he was wrong makes it all the more urgent to clarify the issue and make the independence of Christian teaching plain.

This book is a commendable effort in that direction. It has a twofold aim. In the first place it seeks to give a systematic account of the history of the Christian Social Movement in England with some reference to its growth in the United States.
Of a Lady in Heaven
Authors: Macdonald K. C.
Published: July 2007

I had never before fallen so easily and pleasantly into conversation with anyone; it was as though we had for many years enjoyed an unexacting friendship. For though I was fully aware that she was a stranger to me, there seemed to be between us no barriers of the mind; and this, despite the fact that I was suddenly in a place that I did not know, without even the vaguest memory to tell me how I had come there. I remember marvelling at the beauty of the scene, and wondering if its mild and charming aspect had cast a spell upon me. For we were quite at ease. We stood on a broad stone terrace, balustraded and open to the sky, stretching back to the gardens and pavilions of a palace. Beneath our feet, below steep, flower-covered slopes and rolling fields, the whole world seemed to lie within the possibilities of vision; and now the plains, now the far-distant mountains, now the dark stretches of the forest revealed themselves beneath a tender floating haze that was as fresh as morning, yet as restful and contented as the twilight.

She stood looking down over the fields, leaning a little forward, one finely-shaped hand resting lightly on the balustrade. Her graciousness was elusive, yet not remote, her friendliness apparent without effort. Perfectly attuned to her surroundings, assured and happy and free from arrogance, she gave me sympathy and welcome without questioning, and I accepted it. Still unaware of what had happened to me, I stood on a garden terrace high above the world and talked of the places and the people that I loved with one who loved them too.
Woman in the Middle Ages
Authors: Trouncer Margaret
Published: July 2007

Some people still cherish romantic ideas about the Middle Ages. They form visionary pictures of the typical medieval lady living on the principles of popular hagiography and doing embroidery in a high tower of ivory, while her husband was in the Holy Land. Indeed, she must have smiled, as we do, when St. Thomas, writing on the adornment of women, says that it is unlawful for a Christian woman to paint her face, unless it be for a valid reason, such as re-capturing the affections of an erring husband.

Some theologians loved to make catalogues and put woman in just her right niche in the social universe; but she was an inveterate Pagan at heart, and had a disconcerting way of popping out of her bandbox. If the scholastics would call her the unregenerate daughter of Eve, they must abide by the result if she became the cause of all evil.

The Aristocracy, on the other hand, placed woman on a pedestal. Opinions were varied : Jacques de Vitry writing in the thirteenth century, says of Eve that ‘she had no rest until she had succeeded in banishing her husband from the garden of delights.’ On the other hand, a manuscript at Cambridge says : ‘Woman is to be preferred to man, to wit: in material because Adam was made from clay and Eve from the side of Adam, and in conception because a woman conceived God,’ and so on.

As the cloister became the citadel of the finest spirits of Christendom, there arose the vision of woman as the supreme temptress.
Teaching and St. Thomas
Authors: Herring A. G.
Published: July 2007

The author of a book on how to write advertisements for selling goods came to face the question as to what was to be done if the advertisement writer simply could not think of anything to say. His solution was—start an argument with yourself.

It is said that one of our great preachers prepares his sermons in the following way. He writes at the top of the paper the statement which he wishes to teach. Below this he writes : ‘But it seems that this is not the case, because . . . .’ and here follow various objections and difficulties. The truth is there is nothing like an argument, or objection, to make one think, or to arouse interest, as the middle ages so well understood. Every article of the Summa of St. Thomas begins with objections—that is, it is cast in the form of an argument with an invisible opponent. His articles are headed, not by a statement, but by a question. For example, ‘Whether the Eucharist gives Grace? And every article has three distinct parts : (1) objections; (2) the magisterial solution of the question, with arguments; (3) replies to the above objections in the light of this solution.

Why did he do so? The answer is, roughly speaking, that St. Thomas wrote like that because he taught like that, and further, he taught like that because he thought like that, as indeed do most of us. First we are set thinking by some problem, next we consider the whole subject and come to some conclusion, and, thirdly, we solve thus the problem which originally set us at work.
Pax Romana
Authors: Black Giles
Published: July 2007

Pax Romana is the International Secretariate binding together Catholic University Students, organised in their respective national Federations, for all forms of common action.

From this definition, it is at once evident that one cannot in general become a member of Pax Romana individually. First the student joins the local Catholic Students’ Union or Group of the University to which he belongs, this Society in turn adheres to the National Federation of Catholic Students’ Societies of the country, and finally this National Federation adheres to the International Secretariate—Pax Romana.

Pax Romana is eleven years old. An attempt was made so far back as 1888 by the late Baron de Montenach, at that time President of the Swiss Group of Students, to found such a Secretariate, and indeed a constituent assembly was held in Rome in 1891, but it was found to be impracticable. It was not until July 21st, 1921, that Pax Romana was actually born in the small University town of Fribourg, Switzerland.

At this first meeting of Pax Romana, the Students’ Societies of twenty-three countries gave their adhesion and fifty members represented these groups or societies.’ Since the inaugural meeting of Pax Romana a series of annual congresses has been held. These assemblies have taken place in Fribourg 1922 (for a second time); Salzburg 1923; Budapest 1924; Bologna (the Holy Year) 1925; Amsterdam 1926; Warsaw 1927; Cambridge 1928; Seville 1929; Munich 1930; Fribourg 1931 (for the third time); and Bordeaux-Lourdes 1932. The numbers of the delegates attending have steadily increased, to the present high number of three hundred.
Professor Goudge on Reunion
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

On Sunday, October 23rd, Professor Goudge preached a sermon in St. Mary’s, Oxford, which has attracted a good deal of attention. Pleading for Reunion, he argued that while the Church as depicted in the New Testament seemed to have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit, present-day facts showed that such monopoly no longer existed. He admits that even ‘our fallen Sister’ speaks at times with the authority of the Spirit, nor ‘can we say for one moment that the Spirit of Pentecost is not present among the Protestant communions,’ while ‘a strong grasp of the Apostolic faith is found in the Church of England.’ But all have fallen short: Rome by her arrogance, cruelty, and refusal to repent, while England and all the Churches outside the Roman communion have suffered from ‘the nationalism from which the Roman Church is free.’ No shortcoming is expressly attributed to the so-called ‘free’ Churches; indeed, Professor Goudge almost idealises them: ‘Spiritual freedom is the greatest of their traditions; there will be no return to us until we, too, are free.’

What then, he asks, is the way to reunion? He frankly acknowledges that he does not see it yet, and that wet must all be content, therefore, to go slowly. But he sees room for hope in the ideas which prevailed at Lausanne : ‘we should jealously guard just that which corresponds to the Apostolic teaching;’ and the key to that lies in Apostolic Succession.
Spengler Views the Machine Age
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

Seldom has a book, so massive and so erudite, caused such a widespread commotion as did Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. It appealed to a variety of tastes. The preacher of imminent and sensational doomsdays has not lost his attraction with the decline of the religious sanctions attributed to bygone apocalyptics. But a scientific age demands a scientific eschatology, and this Spengler supplied. Popular science had promised only a long protracted cooling of the earth’s crust, or, in moments of soaring imagination, the possibility of a collision with a comet or an invasion from Mars. It was too remote to be really scaring. The morbid eschatological appetite wants the world to go out, not with a fizzle, but with a bang, and the sooner the bang the better. Spengler promised something at once scientific, catastrophic, and fairly soon; though perhaps it was not generally realised that ‘soon’ on the lips of this juggler with milleniums might mean quite a number of centuries.

But the appearance of these volumes—they were first published in 1918—was also well timed to meet a more passing mood. In those days of disillusionment it was gratifying to read this comparative study of the rise and fall of civilisations, this deterministic conception of repeating historical cycles, with its assurances that the signs of the times pointed to a speedy downfall of our own discredited culture. It was particularly gratifying to defeated Germany.
European Unity
Authors: Reginald F. Trevett
Published: July 2007

We hear much of the ideal of European unity, and much more of the difficulties lying in the Way of its realisation. But for a satisfactory definition of this unity we ask in vain. The trend of public and private comment is largely negative—let us avoid war at all costs. It may be of some use to consider the problem from a strictly Thomist standpoint and to discover whether it can be solved in the light of Thomist principles.

All conflict is ultimately metaphysical and every war a battle of philosophies. Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes, by teaching that reality is reducible mathematically, have made the unity of number identical with that of being. Unfortunate man not so reducible, has become ‘res cogitans’ cut off from reality, thinking intuitively, and the body, as Maritain observes, an instrument not of perception, but of conquest. Intellect is shut up in the brain, and body goes forth to organise matter and subdue the Universe. This situation is further complicated, on the one hand, by Kant’s doctrines of unknowable reality and the supremacy of the moral consciousness, and, on the other, by Hobbesian and nineteenth century evolutionary materialism. Small wonder the heirs of such thought find themselves clamouring for a European unity they cannot define but for which they are ever more or less consciously striving.