In an article in Blackfriars some months back, describing the circumstances that led up to the condemnation of the Action Franćaise by Cardinal Andrieu, which has since been followed by a formal promulgation by the Pope of the condemnation of the Action Franćaise 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 hierarchy’s approval of Cardinal Andrieu’s 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 Montauban—who at most only expressed his opinion that the first moves in the condemnation were no more than a serious warning against its tendencies—has 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.

Under this title a small book has been brought out by a new firm of publishers, Messrs. Sheed and Ward. It is a proof of the courage of this new firm that it should have published a book on political economy for the sum of one shilling, for it is notorious that Books on economics have very little sale in England, except text-books for examination purposes, and these have only an adventitious popularity. Indeed, popularity is probably the wrong word. We hope here that the courage of these publishers will receive the counterpart it always merits, namely encouragement, and that the book will be widely read. Certainly the book itself deserves well of the reading public, since it takes the somewhat specialist subject of Imperial Preference and succeeds in making it not only interesting but inspiring.

This is not to be wondered at, for the author, Mr. W. A. S. Hewins, knows his subject thoroughly from within. His influence in England has been considerable, though his name is not so widely known as his work has been. We think that this forgetting of his name and remembering of his work would please Mr. Hewins, for he has never been one to push his personal deserts or claims; it is a cause, an ideal, even a dream that is his real object. So long as that gets established and begins to produce its due effect, he has always been content to let the glory and the reward slip from him as the sacrificial price of its success.

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 Church’s 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.

It is a rare privilege to have been born an Englishman. But it is a rare misfortune to have nurtured the ambition of one day growing up to be a great Englishman.

A friend of mine who did so has just died of a broken heart in a workhouse asylum, aged forty. As a child he showed great promise, and received even greater encouragement. At fourteen he construed Xenophon with such rapidity and intelligence that his masters spoke to him without reserve of their hope that he might become even as themselves one day. He was esteemed and praised as much for his moral as for his intellectual virtues. He had an engaging manner, a quick creative fancy, a keen eye, and neat, clever, untiring hands.

His first great shock befell him when he was seventeen. It was on the annual prize day, when he was leaving school. He had been heaped with prizes and congratulations by a Right Reverend Prelate, and cheered to the echo by his hundreds of companions and the whole teaching staff. He sat at his desk modestly concealed behind Lingard’s History, Jebb’s Sopñocles, Morley’s English Poets, sundry popular scientific treatises, and a tiny purse of golden sovereigns. He had a minimum of ordinary human vanity, and a maximum of ordinary human gratitude. He was meditating profoundly and with some wonder on the inscription at the head of the prize-list—Paltnam Qui Meruit Ferat—when the Right Reverend Prelate rose to sum up the prize-giving with appropriate words.

It was customary (he said) on these occasions to congratulate the prize-winners and to condole with those who had gained no prizes.

The title page of this book runs thus :—

We venture to speak of this book as epoch-marking because to find a precedent for it we should have to go back to Tatian’s Diatesseron. Indeed, if Tatian’s work was drawn up after his apostasy we have no precedent for Père Lagrange’s Synopsis. Not that scholars have been without the almost indispensable help of Greek Synopses. Pfcre Lagrange, always so courteous in his thanks to scholars, whether believers or unbelievers, is at pains to show how the precedent set by Tatian has been followed of late years by such critics as Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld. His own words of Latin preface are significant: Verum, quod mireris, ipsi critici a synopsibus graecis conficiendis non desistunt; inter quos Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld—nullus autem vir catholicus—ab omnibus laudantur.’ (Nevertheless, we may well wonder that these critics have not ceased to draw up Greek Synopses; amongst whom we must give praise to Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld—but no Catholic!).

If, then, Père Lagrange has ventured upon a Greek Synopsis, and if Tatian’s Diatesseron is the work of a heretic, this Synopsis, dated from Jerusalem, WhitSunday, 1926, marks the close of one epoch of Catholic biblical study and the opening of another.