With the recognition of Mianchukuo as an independent state by Japan, matters in the Far East have taken a definite turn. The rest of the world have now to decide what stand they are going to take. China is indefatigable in protest and complaint, but ‘mark now,’ said Prince Henry to Falstaff, ‘and see how a plain tale shall put you down.’ It is in this spirit that the Japanese assessor to the League of Nations Commission has gone about his task. By the process of dispassionately piling known fact on known fact he has presented the world with a case which is unanswerable. China is revealed in all her incompetence, and the justice of Japan’s actions and claims made clear.

In the past ten years there have been two hundred and forty-five outrages committed on foreigners. Thirty-nine persons have been murdered, over one hundred and fifty abducted, of whom the fate is still uncertain. For some the bandit-communists, whom the so-called Government is unable to put down, are responsible. A large proportion, however, can be directly attributed to the anti-foreign spirit which has been deliberately fostered by the authorities ever since the Kuomintang obtained control. Hatred of the foreigner is one of the lessons regularly taught in the schools. It is done mainly through text-books teaching the ‘Three Principles’ of Dr. Sun Yat Sen—a compulsory subject in all schools under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Government.

There has been a good deal of discussion lately about religious broadcasting. Some people will not have wireless at any price, think it is undermining our lives like the rest of the mechanical inventions, and would not have Catholics touch the accursed thing. Unless wireless is in itself wrong—and the example of Vatican City seems to settle that—there is a good deal to be said against the withdrawal of Catholic broadcasts, but it is not the purpose of this article to try to say it. Other people object to the way it has to be, or at any rate is, done. They criticise the matter of broadcast sermons, and resent what they regard as interference with Catholic worship. Father Martindale has several times explained, and again recently in The Southwark Record, that Catholics are free to present the whole faith, but the impression seems to remain that they do, in fact, water it down for wireless audiences.

Like most discussions, this is best—if not most warmly—argued by people with knowledge, and the knowledge required is not perhaps possessed by the ordinary layman. He knows what his own acquaintances think of Catholic broadcasts and what he himself feels about them, but no more. Priests like Père Lhande, of Radio-Paris, and Father Martindale really have some chance of judging of the effects of their talks, and the clergy are the best judges of the material considered suitable for wireless audiences. But there is a line of approach to the whole subject that is within the competence of anyone who has done a good deal of listening-in and is prepared to think a little, and I am not sure that the most has been made of it.

In an age of shifting values, even those who reject most deliberately all Christian standards are unable to free themselves from the complex and pervasive influence of a recent profoundly Christocentric past. The Jewish race alone escapes such influence. With a combination of a practical grasp of detail and a high imaginative vision it is given to the representatives of the Semitic culture to view that Christendom in which they never merged. To those so vitally concerned it is of interest to observe the Christian structure as seen through the alien eyes beneath the caftan, patient and suffering. Among those groups familiar with the Western European peoples, two standpoints remain defined and clear, the Catholic and pre-Christian. How deep is the contrast between these long inherited traditions and the wavering affirmations made in the gaunt mental shadows of that great, wrecked, Lutheran Theology which still cumbers the mind and the prepossessions? Freed from such burden the pre-Christian tradition now reveals a curiously integral quality : Lion Feuchtwanger in this points the example. He can describe, in some ways more clearly than a less remote writer, the external apparatus of the Christian life and the flavour, for no other word can so well express it, of certain individual Christian lives. Still he has the defects of his great qualities, and in dealing with the Goyim he is limited, as far as successful portraiture is concerned, to those in whom all trace of the Christian spirit has vanished. He has, in fact, an admirable gallery of portraits of those who only wear the Christian mask.

A desire to identify the Kingdom of God with the dominion of good taste, to give the authority of divine inspiration to an honest prejudice, can plainly be recognised. Whether or no the strong distaste for the products of vineyard, brewery and distillery is the cause or effect of the prejudice against fermented liquor, it is clear that the prejudice is a compelling force in the ‘free churches’ to-day. Hardly will a minister be called to the pulpit unless he be a trusted professor of total abstinence. The layman who takes his ‘modest quencher’ cannot hope to become a deacon or local preacher when the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a society of total abstainers in full and constant session. Much liberty of departure from the old paths of creed and catechism is allowed to nonconformist ministers, always provided they hold stiffly and expound eloquently this prejudice against intoxicating drink. True religion, in fact, in the minds of many is merged with the personal distastes of the believer, so that ‘prohibition’ is proclaimed the hope of this world and the glory of the Kingdom. A prejudice unchecked, smiled upon rather than discouraged, is contagious. There is no telling in what fanaticism it may end.

We recognise also that it crops up periodically in the history of Christianity, this conviction that an enlightened few alone possess the truth of the Kingdom. The esoteric doctrine is held by the few, and they are God’s elect.

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.

Set up to commemorate the social principles of Leo XIII, there stands in Rome a statue of a modern worker. Its significance is, I take it, unequivocal. Quite definitely it is not what a number of people would like it to be—an expression in stone of those picturesque stories with which the affluent are wont to edify their children about the accommodating fortitude and longanimity of the Destitute. Nor is it merely a comfortable eulogy of labour, an index to the spiritual desirability of mean circumstance (a gift dispensed with suspicious altruism by the prosperous). There is danger to the soul in destitution as well as in opulence. There is a fair distinction between poverty and pauperism. (Blessed are the poor, but in servility there is no virtue.) There is no libel on the Church so gross, yet apparently so ably substantiated from within, as that she encourages an attitude of laissez-faire towards the exploited, or presents economic misery solely to theotechnic treatment and compensation hereafter. A certain type of Christian is inspired by a convenient fatalism in respect of the disinheritance of half the world. Him alone have we to thank for the grossest falsehood of all—that religion is the opium of the masses.

The assertion of a heroic principle is intransigent and eternal. That is why, in speaking of Lenin, I speak first of the .Worker’s statue by the Church of St. John Lateran. Outside Russia there was none in November, 1917, that believed that the reign of Lenin would exceed, in duration, that of Kerensky.

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.

‘To run slap into infinity is a momentarily annihilating experience.’ When a man has embraced an emotional faith in a supernatural, while, by force of puritanical environment, denying the natural, it is unlikely that the faith will live for long. What is not anchored to humanity is no safe and abiding refuge for a man. If he ‘lives in a large modern city where existence is insecure, and change is rapid, and further change imperative; where chaos is a standing threat, and yet in the refluent ballet of becoming every optimistic idea seems on tip-toe to be realised; where, at the very lowest one must put one’s best foot forward to keep up with the march of invention and innovation : the How challenges at every turn, and (he) is irresistibly driven into its arms.’ The Why of things no longer concerns him; he joins in the quest for that Utopia which Marxism seeks. It is at least a refuge from the denial of human values which puritanism implies.