Wishing no doubt to console a group who are more noisy at the moment than they are numerous, a firm of Catholic publishers has now perpetrated an English version of the Comte de Saint-Aulaire's venomous lampoon Genève contre la Paix, a work well calculated to offset their former productions, The Church and War and Peace and the Clergy, which were—well, not quite nice.

It is the “stuff to give ‘em.” M. de Saint-Aulaire is the French equivalent of Colonel Blimp. But whereas our English hero is merely reduced by the thought of that dreadful League of Nations to an inarticulate spluttering of “Gad, sir! Stuff and nonsense, what, what,” his Gallic colleague has a more vivid imagination and the gift of tongues. True, he has his lucid moments, only too rare in this book, in which his shrewdness delights us; but for most of the time he sees red, or, should I say, Red. So eloquent indeed is this excited old gentleman that it is a little difficult sometimes for one, whose humdrum job it has been for sixteen years to acquaint himself with the actual history of the League, to follow his flights of fancy. His essay is not very coherent. It begins by explaining that the League has never existed or, alternatively, (as the lawyers would say), has long since compassed its own decomposition. Having proclaimed the dogma of equality (Has it?), it has built, though decomposed, upon inequality and privilege. The real forces behind it (if it exists) are those occult Internationals, Bolshevism, Freemasonry, Judaism and Pangermanism—oddly united, these last two—which, as Colonel Blimp would heartily agree, are well calculated to make the flesh of all good Christians creep. The League is “a prostitute,” “an abortion clinic,” “a corpse,” “a fantastic hoax,” “a gravedigger,” “aparalytic,” “anassassin,” “asuicide,"etc. It has committed nothing but errors: it has told nothing but lies.

The history of philosophy is certainly not the uniform and regular development of a primal seed; there are breaks, irregularities, off-shoots. Yet it is true that we cannot legitimately reduce it to a mere welter of mutually exclusive ideas, to a mere swarm of watertight systems. We shall look in vain for complete breaks. The past cannot but reach over into the present and in some sense perpetuate itself. Period shades off into period gradually and the pressure of what has gone before leaves an indelible mark on the present. Thus all would agree now that we cannot admit a decisive and unbridgeable gulf between the scholasticism of the close of the Middle Ages and the philosophy that succeeded. It is true that the age of Descartes is an age of revolt throughout a great part of Europe, but this very fact precludes the possibility of a complete new beginning, since that age of which the philosopher may be said to be a spokesman by its very contrast and opposition to the preaching age is largely determined and coloured by the past.

It is the most frightful of ironies that our economic system has opened new and valid horizons to the aspiration of our work precisely by that same liberal-commercial drive which has smashed pre-capitalist systems of personal labour and family production. Man’s work and woman’s bearing—the bitter things under the domination of the balance sheet, the world-wide market, the clean-cuffed man of commerce. Because clean-cuffs does not care a damn for man’s work and woman’s bearing. A production which is primarily judged by its export balance (and that means a production which is primarily for the profit and prestige of the clean-cuffs, the telephone-manipulators of marginal prices, the destroyers) runs clean counter to the restoration of the personal in industry. But, says Marcel Melcor, liberalist commercialism at its present stage involves an impossibility and is being destroyed by it. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at the expense of the majority. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at a greater pace than that of the majority. Morals aside, you can't do it. The agricultural population of the world (three-fourths of the world's population) cannot continue to be exploited in the interests of export balance sheets. He says we’ve got to stop it before it breaks us. And he says the only way to do it is to turn the trend of economic effort away from international export balances and build up justice through recognizing the existence of our next-door neighbour. And he is speaking here primarily as an economist. The humiliating lesson is rubbed in: if you want to save your bacon you must seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. Which is a bit of a surprise if all you wanted to save was your bacon.

The second volume of Lord Halifax’s life completed a first-rate biography of a striking and dynamic personality. It gives to the many who only knew him externally, in his chivalrous championship of Reunion ideals, and in the part he played in the domestic politics of his own Church, a vivid picture of the whole man. Mr. Lockhart sketches with skilful pen Lord Halifax’s mental background, his temperament and character, his inner spiritual life and his family, social and ecclesiastical relationships. And this complete portrait, seen by most of us now for the first time, will compel thoughtful Catholics to search afresh for the answer to the question: What was it that kept so exceptionally gifted a man, whose high principle and personal integrity no one could question, unwaveringly faithful to the Church of England through a long life of incessant preoccupation with Catholicism, during which he came to hold almost every doctrinal truth which the Church proposes to the faith of its members? The answer to this question, if it could be found, is likely to provide the answer to another of great moment: Do the causes which operated to keep this one man faithful to the Church of England operate also to keep many others, similarly circumstanced, to the same allegiance?

The Middle Ages will provide a wealth of hymnody, most of which lies unhappily neglected upon the library shelves. The output was prodigious, and was of varying quality. The most outstanding literary form is the Sequence, which found its way into the Mass and was sung immediately before the Gospel. Its originator was a Benedictine monk, Notker Balbulus, the Stammerer or perhaps the Garrulous—he has left most entertaining gossip of his hero Charlemagne. He found it hard, we are told, to commit to memory the long melodies sung on the last syllable of the Alleluia and to counteract this failing he forestalled Mr. Pelman by setting the notes to a simple form of words. In the next three centuries this elementary device evolved into a definite literary form, written finally in metre and rhyme. The Easter Sequence, Victimae Paschali laudes, shows it in its earlier stages and the Whit Sunday Sequence, Veni Sancte Spiritus, shows it fully developed as a recognized form of rhymed composition.

Before dealing with the Sequence, however, we must refer to a series of hymns more familiar in their English than in their Latin form. The original from which they have been quarried is the 12th century production of Bernard of Morlas, a monk of Cluny: Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus: “The world is very evil, the times are waxing late; Be sober and keep vigil, the Judge is at the gate.” It is for the most part a long denunciation of an evil world fast moving towards the abyss of destruction. In it he attacks vice with a savage candour that lacks both restraint and reticence. But from this majestic diatribe are drawn those well-known Anglican hymns: “Brief life is here our portion” and “Jerusalem the golden.”

The age in which we live presents a rapidly growing cleavage between law and conscience; and this cleavage is resulting inevitably in the destruction of both. It is due almost entirely to the subjectivism which has been steadily gaining ground for the last four hundred years. Once private judgment is admitted as a principle in the conduct of human, affairs the objective norms of human action cease to function as such and both conscience and law are deprived of their vitality. As early as the sixteenth century an incipient subjectivism made its appearance in Philosophy as well as in Religion; it is possible, indeed, that the effort to segregate Philosophy from Religion was the source of the whole evil. For when Religion has ceased to provide a philosophy of life it is no longer true religion, and its sanctions lose their compelling force. Moreover, Philosophy unallied to Religion is as a ship without rudder; it follows the caprice of any intellectual wind that blows. The purpose and the very content of human nature is lost sight of; law becomes an unstable shadow of its real self; and conscience, left to stand alone, is no more than a blind guide leading the blind. This cleavage was not suddenly wrought; nor has it come about without protest; Thomas More, whom we now rejoice to call Saint, was amongst the first to protest against it and thought it worth while to seal his protest with his blood.

After Golden Head in 1889, The Town in 1890 written in France, and a second version written in China 1897. The Golden Head is the drama of a man alone with his own nothingness; The Town is that of the Commonwealth of Men. Not the entire population is brought on to the stage as a really sophisticated modem would attempt or would pretend, but four men and one woman come forward, and behind them is the murmur of the masses.

Lambert de Besme is a political Boss. To him you turn when things come to a head, for he knows the magic formulae which quieten the crowd, and can give pleasant names to the behaviour of the herd. Yet he is not happy: after wasting his life in futile fuss he feels his soul awaking: stricken in years, he has not known the love of woman; this way, his world will fall to dust, he will seek shelter with the dead, will hug the dust before he is one with it; nay, the champion of the settled order will voice the vengeance of the oppressed.

“The way to liturgical life does not go through mere teaching but before all it goes through doing.” These words of Doctor Guardini go straight to the heart of the difficulty of liturgical revival. The numerous liturgical societies and periodicals of to-day are so varied in their matter and their treatment of it, that one is sometimes at a loss to discover in them any common purpose. They all profess to have at heart the cultivation of a conscious liturgical life in the Catholic community; but the various aspects and studies of liturgy in which they indulge cannot all claim to have an equally important share in promoting this end. And indeed it is difficult to see where many of them have led or are going to lead at all. Their journals appear and their summer schools are held with unflinching regularity, yet one fails to discern any results beyond a keener appreciation of the beauty of Plainchant or Gothic vestments. This is very good in its way, but it is not all; and we are so often given the impression that it is all. Liturgy is more than this: it is a life, and therefore not something merely to be learnt; above all it is something that must be done—lived; and living is not brought about just by introducing Plainchant or studying the history or art of the liturgy;—these material adjuncts are all necessary in their own place as long as they do not degenerate into dilettante aestheticism or moribund archeology—but before all else it must be realized that liturgical life is essentially based on theological principles. If then this life is to be lived, the people must be instructed in these principles. In the words of a writer in Orate Fratres: “The first requisite for the liturgical outlook is one of spirit.

A very pronounced factor in the success of Mother Margaret’s work was the high repute and admiration in which she was held by all ranks of the clergy. She came into contact with all the eminent churchmen of her day in England, and though her work was practically confined to the dioceses of Birmingham and Clifton—only in the last six years of her life did she extend her foundations to other dioceses—no fewer than ten of the thirteen diocesan bishops held themselves honoured to be her friends. The other ranks of the clergy showed her equal respect and affection, and many of them were accustomed to call her their “Mother,” as was done by the priest-disciples of Saint Catherine of Siena. Mother Margaret on her side accepted the relationship even to the extent of chiding them when she felt it would do them good. To one she wrote: “Let me tell you, my dear Reverend Father, that patience is the great thing you want. You know my real affection for you, and as you call me Mother, sometimes mothers may take liberties with great doctors, if they are their sons.”

The English Press for some years past has consistently misjudged the Spanish people and our Press of to-day, with scanty exceptions, is not exempt from this unhappy phase of English journalism. But however complacent we may hitherto have been in accepting the views of our journalists, we must feel something of a shock in the revelations of the Spanish Hierarchy who have so effectually drawn aside the curtain concealing things deliberately hidden from us.

The document they have published is one couched in calm language uttered without either bitterness or rancour. It is a plain statement subscribed by 48 prelates ruling or administering 54 of the 60 dioceses of Spain, men on the spot speaking from personal experience. It opens with a clear account of the injustice of the 1936 elections, when through “the lawlessness of a Government, which, in defiance of the will of the people, set up a political machinery in direct opposition to the majority of the nation, the Right, with a majority of more than a million votes over the Left, was given 118 deputies less than the Popular Front. For this purpose the votes of entire provinces had been entirely cancelled.”

Of the utmost importance is their reply to the objection that “Whatever were the Reds’ excesses, the fact remains that, had Franco not rebelled, the hundreds and thousands of priests who were assassinated would have been saved for their spiritual work.” The Bishops’ answer is: “As witnesses of the position at the moment when the conflict arose, we are unable to agree with the statement. The exact opposite is the truth.

Baron Von Hugel compared the interpenetration of nature and grace to the movements of a hand inside a glove: “God everywhere but stimulates and supports man whom He has made, and His Hand moves ever underneath and behind the tissue—a tissue which, at best, can become as it were a glove, and suggest the latent hand. The Divine Action will thus stimulate and inform the human action somewhat like the force that drives the blood within the stag's young antlers, or like the energy that pushes the tender sap-full fern-buds up through the hard, heavy ground.” All that can be seen is the outward veil. But the movements of it are of such a kind that they point to a power within, other than, on another plane of being than, the glove.

So also in the history of divine activity among men, the raising of fallen humanity according to those concrete needs which spring from the combined historic facts of original justice, original sin, and Redemption, we see only the race, each individual human being. But as in the movements of the glove, so in the activity of grace-impelled men, those movements, that activity, point beyond the visible fringes of the natural vehicle to a Presence of an altogether different kind, working, planning, for the good of men, things far above what we can conceive, or, having conceived, could achieve.

In the course of a long and interesting correspondence between William James and Shadworth H. Hodgson on the subject of free-will, the latter writes as follows: “Let us, as you say, have no more ‘gnashing of the teeth over the freewill business’; let us agree to differ. The best of it is that we both believe in the reality of free-will, only that I think it can be reconciled with determinism, while you think indeterminism is required to make it conceivable.”

Although some fifty years have passed since these words were written discussion concerning the freedom of the will and determinism continues varied only in its mode of presentation. The same difficulties which confronted the writers just mentioned confront the psychologist of to-day. These difficulties arise in fact from differences of opinion concerning the meaning of free-will on the one hand and determinism on the other. At bottom the problems involved are speculative rather than empiric, and the controversy to which we have alluded was conducted rather on the former than on the latter plane.

Mere handling of these two volumes—the second edition of Père Mersch’s unique book on the Mystical Body—gives one a good sensual delight through sight and touch. But within the attractive format lies still greater pleasure for the intellect, for not only is it accurate in textual and historical criticism complete with footnotes, bibliographies and indices, it is also written in an easy-flowing style. As the positive treatment of an actual and profound point of Christian doctrine it is a perfect work of its kind. With great skill P. Mersch leads the reader to the authentic sources of the doctrine of the Mystical Body, and once there the reader looks back perhaps to discover that in his previous attitude towards the Church as the Mystical Body he had been veering the wrong way.

We do believe in the Holy Catholic Church. Every time we repeat the Creed we profess our faith in that doctrine. But sometimes we forget what faith means, and try to put forward natural reasons as convincing evidence of the truths we profess. Particularly do we tend to see the total explanation of the Church within the limits of human knowledge, forgetting perhaps that faith is a special grace from God by which we are enabled to assent with utter certainty to divine mysteries, to supernatural truths inexplicable to the human mind. The Church is just such a mystery, ranking alongside of the blessed Trinity, the Incarnation or the Eucharist. Her nature, the intimate union of her members in Christ, cannot be wholly explained with any more convincing natural evidence than those other mysteries; nor shall we be able to analyze her more successfully than St. Paul who piled simile upon simile in his effort to describe this society which requires a divine light to be seen in its true colours.

One of the minor tragedies of the Spanish Civil War lies in the fact that Professor Dempf of Bonn was not able to give at Santander in 1936 his projected course of lectures on “Christian Political Philosophy in Spain.” It is however no small compensation that he should have published these lectures, which are thereby communicated at present to all who understand German and, it is to be hoped, later to English-speaking readers.

And behind this there is a greater hope yet. In reading the book one cannot refrain from asking again and again, “Will Spain which has so magnificent a Christian tradition, which has produced so many of the world’s greatest political theorists, succeed this time after the agony of revolution and martyrdom in realizing the noblest ideas in practice and returning to the authentic Christian and Catholic outlook in politics?” Or will it be as before—a noble idealism existing side by side with an unintelligent hard realism personified in the classical figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Dr. Dempf is content to remind us of the historic Spanish paradox, to express the hope that the Spanish people will rediscover themselves after the thunders of the civil war and then, as if preparing the way for return, to indicate with the insight and conciseness of a master the teaching of the great Spanish political theorists. For only by returning to the ideas built up by these men will Spain be able to re-establish a healthy political life.

Hymns have been written by the thousand, and of the thousands written very few have stood the test of time, the vicissitudes of religious revolution, or the vagaries of human taste. Few of us can regret the disappearance of many hymns that would evoke upon discovery no response in our minds beyond a polite curiosity and mild amusement that we reserve for the more grotesque museum pieces. Modem hymns, however, may meet with a different reception, and the man who would open a public discussion about them must step out along a thorny path, where even his guardian angel may fear to tread. Some hymns which the stream of time has borne down to us may still be sung with pleasure, “rari nantes in gurgite vasto.” And their appeal need not rest solely upon their antiquity, but may possible be based upon their adequate expression of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

We may like hymns or we may dislike them, whether on principle or from prejudice: we may sing them one and all with a joyous abandon, indifferent alike to their quality or their quantity: we may accept them with a Christian resignation as part of that bracing discipline, which makes a man upon other occasions take medicine with a nauseous taste hoping that thereby he may possibly reap some benefit. Whatever we may think or feel about them, hymns are here and we cannot avoid them: a careless turn of the knob on the Radio will bring us the most unexpected examples: on Sunday the very streets are not free of them, when every town has its contingent of the Salvation Army: even attendance at a Cup Final may involve us willy-nilly in a mass of rough men sobbing in chorus, “Abide with me, Fast falls the eventide! “

If any new proof were required to establish the rapid decay of the society in which we live, none more convincing could be adduced than the increasing volume of appeals to reason which have been issued by competent authorities of late years. It is an unhappy reflection that this iteration is made necessary by the disregard with which they have been met; for it is axiomatic that the frequency of such appeals is governed by the heedlessness with which they are received.

A recent issue of the Tablet contained a report of the moving address made by the Pope, from what was thought to be his death-bed on Christmas Eve, as well as a careful commentary on the Recall to Religion made a short time previously by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On another page news was given of the latest book written by the Master General of the Order of Preachers. Appel au Bon Sens has created something of a sensation in France and it will, perhaps, not be out of place to suggest some reasons for this; particularly as the book is not likely to have a wide circulation among English readers.

The story of the gallant attempt of the later Middle Ages to win Asia for the Church is so often passed over with the scantiest reference, even by Catholic historians, that it is almost unknown. It covered more than a century; a century whose short opening years of high hopes were followed by long dreary ones of disappointment, persecution and martyrdom, to end in the destruction of all achievement and the expulsion of the missionaries.

The first great missionary movement, which converted the northern barbarians, was the work of the Benedictines, while the glories of the sixteenth century in the East belong to the Society of Jesus. The great missionaries of the later Middle Ages were the Franciscans and Dominicans. Both Orders bore the brunt of the battle equally throughout Asia, but Cathay and Central Asia was particularly the sphere of the Minorites, while India, Persia and the Caspian Steppes was that of the Preachers.

The publication of a recent survey of the background of convent education gives rise to an interesting train of thought regarding those diverse generations of the Catholic circles of privilege whose daughters receive their formation in convents of a socially exclusive character. Mother O’Leary in her authoritative study, whose scope is very much wider than that by-path which we are now considering, writes with knowledge and calm and has provided us with a most sympathetic but also objective impression. The first section of her book contains an examination of that background of convent education which had given such religious moulding as the polite world of pre-revolutionary France was willing to accept. As a preparation the author devotes some space to an account of the various curricula in use in the colleges, but it is manifestly impossible to touch on more than the fringe of the intricate subject of the mental background of the privileged boys of the Ancien Régime.

In regard to convent education Madame de Genlis has left us a description of the methods of the abbey of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte, where the abbess was ready to entertain a small proportion of the community in her private apartments, and where the social intercourse afforded to the girls trained them early to take their place in that section of French society which was accessible to mild religious ideals when presented palatably.

If this book could take over something of the prestige enjoyed until recently by Renan's Vie de Jesus, it would be a great blessing for France and for us all—instead of the portrait of Christ according to Rousseau, to have one which despite many faults and insufficiencies is at least genuinely Catholic. It is not a preposterous hope. In our own country already the Daily Express has been placarding generous excerpts from the book. And—a more serious factor—it has found a translator who has supplied a sufficiently attractive text. However, this article is not concerned with the external success of the book, but only with certain of its internal failures. Not with the idea of condemnation, but of reaching a sober appreciation. Fortunately, it is possible in this task to make use of an article contributed to the July issue of the Revue Biblique of last year, in which Père Lagrange, O.P. —whose judgment in such a matter is pre-eminently valuable—has expressed himself freely and at some length. But only when appeal is made explicitly to this authority can the views here expressed be taken as having any supercharged value.

Is intellectual work compatible with the religious life? According to St. Thomas Aquinas a life of contemplation and asceticism normally demands it. Intellectual activity is closely bound up with contemplation and the teaching apostolate. Study is not just idle curiosity; for it springs from a love of all truths included in the Supreme Truth, in the Being Whose essence is Truth: God. Love of God demands contemplation, and contemplation, in its turn, demands study. Whosoever loves God desires to know Him and to explore the secrets of His infinite perfection; and without study it is impossible to have a clear and intelligent faith. Again, if contemplation should express and complete itself in the mission to teach divine truth to others, a knowledge of religious doctrine, as complete as possible is obviously essential.

The Order of Friars Preachers has so thoroughly understood the importance of intellectual work that it regards the latter as a fundamental necessity and has placed it, alongside of the Divine Office, first in the hierarchy of means. It was St. Dominic’s wish that his sons should be sufficiently detached from primary material interests to apply themselves, without intermission, to study, prayer and preaching. The Order of Preachers was, in fact, the first religious group to make organised and collective study an essential part of the religious life. The Friars Preachers were students; and there has been no modification of this characteristic of theirs during the course of the centuries.