The Catholic Here and Now

(Continued from page 338)

charitable, and courteous. Catholics rightly cherish the fact that the first declaration of the principle of toleration, according to which no man is to be persecuted for his religious beliefs, came from Lord Calvert, proprietor of the Maryland colony. From the very first days of the settlement, governors were obliged to take an oath that they would not molest any believer in Jesus Christ "on account of his faith;" and when this oath was transformed into a law during 1649 the wording was less tolerant than Catholics would have liked to see it, because the power was no longer entirely in their hands. Out of the experience of Maryland and those other colonies which imitated its example the Fathers of the Constitution were enabled to derive that counsel which made them embody into the fundamental law, though. in a manner not altogether positive, the principle of religious liberty.

T

HESE things are perennially significant, butt hey constitute only a part of the service rendered by what may be termed colonial Catholicism. Dr. Bolton has listed, in the fashion of a scholar, the contributions made by Latin settlers-notably the French and the Spanish-to our custom and culture. Such historians as Claude Bowers have introduced into general American his tory glimpses, at least, of what the Irish did to advance the cause of liberty. Still other men have pointed out the conscientiousness with which Catholic. citizens have taken their part in the NaI consider it more expetion's wars. dient, however, to remember the vast number of those whom the Church has

Our Own Theatre List
(See page 344)

"Coquette," Maxine Elliott.-Comedy, tragedy; youth in a small Southern town; Helen Hayes and excellent cast; first choice for tears and humor.

"Escape," Booth.-Galsworthy's melodrama; an English gentleman, escaped from prison, plays hare to the constables' hounds in many exciting situations; Leslie Howard; what would you do if he took refuge with you? "The Ivory Door," Charles Hopkins.-Fantasy; mediæval fairy tale, telling the truth about human nature; Henry Hull and good company; one of the best things in town. "Trial of Mary Dugan," National.-Mystery, murder, melodrama; circumstantial evidence turned inside out before your eye, convincingly acted; you won't move.

"The Royal Family," Selwyn.-Comedy; home hubbub of a family of famous theatrical stars; fairly well acted; so funny that it sometimes isn't real enough to be as good as it should be. "The Shannons of Broadway," Martin Beck.— Comedy, melodrama; vaudeville actors running a small-town hotel; James and Lucile Gleason; good hard-boiled sentiment and some music.

"The Queen's Husband," Playhouse.-Modern light comedy; royalty in a mythical kingdom; Roland Young; Sherwood's most subtle humor. "Marco Millions." Guild Theatre.-Satirical com edy; O'Neill's beautiful spectacle of Marco Polo's trip to Venice and China; the immature West meeting the wisdom of the East. "Strange Interlude," John Golden.-A psychological novel put upon the stage; a new kind of drama; Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne in O'Neill's finest.

Best Musical Shows

"Funny Face," Alvin.-The Astaires, Gershwin music; best on Broadway.

"Show Boat," Ziegfeld.-Better than Ziegfeld's good ones. "Manhattan Mary," Apollo.-Ed Wynn. What more? Well, not much.

"A Connecticut Yankee," Vanderbilt.-Good lyrics and music; not much Mark Twain.

The Movies

(See page 350)

"Beau Sabreur."-The so-called sequel to "Beau Geste." Lots of sand, but no ginger. "Chicago."-A meaty, amusing melodrama with a big performance by Phyllis Haver. "The Circus."-Charlie Chaplin. Drop everything and go. "The Divine Woman."-Greta Garbo looks lovely and tries hard.

"Drums of Love."-D. W. Griffith is himself again. "The Gaucho."-Douglas Fairbanks in an outsize

picture.

"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."-Laughs and pretty girls and pretty vague.

"The Last Command."-The mighty Jannings, with a good story, good direction, and good support. "Love Me and the World Is Mine."-Directed by Dupont, but misses fire badly. "Sadie Thompson."-Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore, and an inadequate copy of "Rain." "Simba."-A fine animal picture. "The Student Prince."-A Lubitsch picture, and a good one. Ramón Navarro, Norma Shearer, and Jean Hersholt.

Washington Square."-You'll

harm, exactly.

come

"13 to no "West Point."-William Haines, authentic settings, utterly preposterous.

"Wings."-A fine war picture, marred by the well-meant efforts of Clara Bow.

induced to devote themselves voluntarily to purely idealistic enterprise as priests. sisters, and teaching brothers. Year after year these "forces of charity" have constituted, not a corps of officers for the political advancement of the Papacy, as some zealots profess to believe, but a hard-working army bent on seeing to it that millions of average John Joneses do something better than sit on a spiritual park bench. I believe it quite possible that the quality of American Catholi cism will improve; that, existing handicaps of one kind or another having been overcome, an advancement incompara bly superior to anything achieved in the past should be registered. But surely. enough has been done to discredit the stupid ballyhoos of the unwise.

From all this it follows that, while the body of American Catholic citizens do not profess to be endowed with recipes for curing all the Nation's ills, they are quite sure that they possess a formula which will contribute something to the Nation's health. One will look in vain to the Church for the answer to the Muscle Shoals problem, or for an adjustment of the farm population to modera industrial conditions. But it seems to me incredible that any thoughtful American, surveying the dimensions of the present addiction to crime, to an individualistic conception of romantic bliss and to the abandonment of Christian convictions, should fail to feel that the Catholic Church is an invaluable ally in the battle against public and private evi! This is so much the more true because Catholics here are dedicated to the prin ciple of toleration, not merely by the great Christian law of charity, but also by their manifold memories of the life lived by their forebears in this new land.

Two Cents a Mile.

368

Music and Musicians:

Ivory, Apes and Peacocks

By WALTER R. BROOKS

Business and Finance :

From Washington:

Hoover Passes Two Ordeals

Flood Control

The Naval Program Slashed

Still "Drafting" Coolidge

Editorials:

Hoover on Prohibition

Myth and Truth at Havana

383

From the Rhine to the Guadalquiver 385 By EUGENE BONNER

Conducted by HARRIET EAGER DAVIS

As remembered by GEORGE ARLISS

.

The American Drama, by RoSAMOND
GILDER
Midwinter Fiction

FRANCIS RUFUS BELLAMY, Publisher

Etching by EDWARD HOPPER

386

390

392

396

361

362

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief

THE OUTLOOK, March 7, 1928. Volume 148, Number 10. Company at 120 East 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscription to countries in the postal Union, $6.56. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright. 1928, by The Outlook Company.

SCARCELY a day passes just now

without its quota of letters from Outlook readers. What do they say? Unanimously (we would like to declare) they write to assure us that The Outlook could not be better. But not so.

THIS morning one man has just written to say that he is so afraid of getting mad during the year and refusing to continue his subscription in 1929 that he is insuring himself against this calamity by sending in a payment for two years now. Another informs us that our "spineless creed" of a few weeks ago is so calculated to make him swear at us and not by us that he is rebellious; while still another declares that we have said we were going to make a new Outlook, and that she, for one, can't see any difference between the old and the new! Follows a note which says that the writer has watched with pleasure "the progressive changing of the magazine from a purely aesthetic, old-fashioned, orthodox journal into a wideawake modern but sane publication, treating our daily problems with courage and reason."

And there you are.

No, to judge from letters there is no unanimity in what Outlook readers think. And yet a steadily growing number of new friends are joining our circle every day. Old subscribers will be glad to know that The Outlook's faithful supporters have stood by almost to a man in this latest adventure of the "good ship on whose prow Lyman Abbott once stood, peering ahead into the unknown." New readers will be pleased to hear that every day sees more of the new generation upon our lists.

AND yet we still have a long way to go if we are to justify such confidence as the writer of this letter expresses: "As an old subscriber of many years, I am going to ask for the privilege of saying a few words about the new Outlook. It is decidedly new, and I must confess that the first few issues made me literally gasp and wonder if I had lost an old and tried friend. But I decided to withhold judgment-and not have any prejudices. So now I am going to tell you that I like the new Outlook and admire it and find much to enjoy in it. You have gathered together a splendid staff of new minds and new thoughtsand I, for one, thank you and appreciate the work you are doing-and the ideals you are fostering."

Such letters give us renewed zest.

Francis Profers Bellamy

March 7, 1928

Prohibition-The New York Bar
Objects

THE Association of the Bar of the City of New York has adopted a resolution Betting forth that the Eighteenth Amendment "is inconsistent with the spirit and purpose of the Constitution of the United States" and contrary to the rights and liberties supposedly guaranteed "by the first ten Amendments." The Amendment and the Volstead Act, the lawyers urged, should therefore be repealed and "the subject of prohibition remitted to the sole regulation of the several States."

The action is the third taken within the year by legal associations whose members have given consideration to this subject. The New York County Lawyers Association has called for a study of enforcement abuses, and the Law Association of Philadelphia adopted 1 resolution last March pointing to the vils arising from Volsteadism.

The resolution of the New York City Bar Association has been widely interpreted as another victory for the wets. But this is not entirely accurate. The lawyers refrained from passing upon the moral or ethical phases of prohibition, and it is conceivable that some of those who voted for the resolution may have been ardent drys. The members of the Association were concerned, as dents of the law, with its legal aspects alone. The resolution as introduced Contained seventeen paragraphs attacking prohibition on legal, moral, social, and economic grounds. Prior to adopion, however, all but the legal phase

vere eliminated.

stu

nito.

At the same time the Imperial Wizard revealed the formation of a new order or

degree of Klannishness—the Knights of the Great Forest. Dr. Evans said that the change had been under consideration for some time and that it was in preparation for "new and larger activities." Initiation fee is $1 a head. Membership is compulsory.

The S-4 in Court

DISSATISFACTION in both the Navy Department and the Treasury Department seems to be the chief direct effect of the

finding of the Court of Inquiry into the sinking and the attempted rescue of the submarine S-4.

The reason for this dissatisfaction is The Bar Association of the City of New York has 3,000 members, among twofold. First, both Departments are Them most of the leaders of the bar livdissatisfied with the blame that the Court places upon the commanders of g in the East. Charles Evans Hughes both the Treasury boat Paulding and

the naval submarine S-4. Navy men do not believe that there was evidence sufficient to show beyond reasonable doubt that Lieutenant-Commander Jones, of the S-4, was personally responsible, although they agree that for the collision the major responsibility rested upon the naval vessel. Secretary Mellon, of the Treasury Department, holds that there was no evidence to show that Commander Baylis, of the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding, was responsible. The Court finds that there was an inadequate lookout maintained. At the hearings there was evidence that neither Department informed the other concerning movements of its vessels. The Court recommends a conference for the exchange of information.

The other reason for dissatisfaction is the apparent discrepancy in the findings concerning measures of rescue, Although the Court declares that the rescue operations were "logical, sound, and the most promising of early success," it recommends that Admiral Brumby, who was in general charge of those operations, "be detached from the command of the Control Board."

Secretary Wilbur has directed the Court to reconvene and to explain its reasons with "completeness and particularity."

Economic Freedom for Husbands

AN indication of the results of the emancipation of women, as recorded in a ruling by the Supreme Court of Georgia

that a husband cannot be held liable for damages involving a civil offense committed by his wife:

"By sweeping changes in the law governing civil rights of married women, the doctrine of the merger of the civil existence of wife and husband has been

swept away. While the husband is still declared by the statute to be the head of the family, he, like the King of England, is largely a figurehead. . . . Since the husband's rights and privileges have been swept away by statutes in this State, and as his lordship has been practically, if not completely, swept away by various statutes, why should he be held to his old-time marital liabilities, which were based upon the former marital rights and privileges?"

Age and Newer Worlds

YOUTH that despairs of getting a "kick" out of life after it has turned twenty and age that grows weary at new effort as it approaches threescore and ten might consider the case of Mrs. Harriet Rebecca Hamilton, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, a great-grandmother, past sixty-five, who has entered the University of Arkansas as a freshman, and expects to prepare herself for fuller and more intelligent living.

Mrs. Hamilton, the mother of eight children, recalls the day when, as a child, she locked forward to a college education. Circumstances did not permit realization of the hope. With marriage came the responsibilities of a large family. Years passed, and the children. grew up. Then the chance finally came for Mrs. Hamilton. She enrolled as a journalism student, because she wished to know more about the making of newspapers and how to read more intelligently. She has visions of graduation and an enlarged outlook,

Fortunately, the case is not isolated. It is only in part a novel condition. Women, and men, here and there retain and display the same eager, inquiring, ambitious spirit, regardless of age. There is no formula for procedure in the matter. Opportunities abound to learn more, to gain fresh points of view, to broaden one's interests and sympathies -where the will exists.

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Tin and Famine

THE culinary art in America as viewed. by Lord Askwith, English tin magnate, as reported by the New York World:

"The United States is effectually sealing itself up in a tin can. Half the food Americans eat is tinned. Americans are so busy and so imprisoned in their tinned lives that they never pause to consider what would happen if the tin supply ran out and they had to fall back again on ordinary food. It has been estimated that if anything happened to America's

tin supplies about twenty-eight per cent of American husbands would go hungry, for the simple reason that tinned food has robbed American women of their culinary art."

Farm Relief and the Agitator

To judge by the noise over the farm problem about the National capital or other points more or less remote from the soil, the commotion out around the grass roots should be loud and menacing. But is it? Disinterested observers in the central agricultural area do not think so. They seem more than ever inclined to the view that the farm relief most in demand is relief from the agitator, political and professional.

This does not mean that no farm problem exists. But it does mean that clamorous groups, trying to make capital of a condition demanding sane attention, have magnified the problem out of reasonable proportions.

The failure of agitators to make observable progress and of farmers themservable progress and of farmers themselves to be deeply concerned over their plight just now is explained in no small part by the increase of approximately $1,000,000,000 in the total value of farm products in the United States last year, compared with 1926. The increase, naturally, was not evenly distributed. Depression was relieved appreciably in one region; but little or not at all in another.

In general, however, conditions have been improving. In a group of agricultural States, including Kansas, Nebraska, and several others, the gain in farm values last year amounted to nearly a half billion dollars. In the flood area of the lower Mississippi Valley there were losses. In some of the leading corn States there was but slight gain. Yet the outlook, certainly in much of the Middle West, is far from discouraging. After a series of bad years, the live-stock industry, with the exception of hogs, is on the mend. Its condition is better than at any time since 1920. The outlook in the winter-wheat area at present is promising.

Additionally indicative of a change is substantial revision of the McNaryHaugen Bill itself, with the disputed equalization fee left only as an alternative expedient. And not without significance is the position of the Kansas delegation in Congress, which, with a single exception, voted for the bill in its more radical form last year, but now has expressed its readiness to support the measure without the equalization fee.

Farmers who are going about the

business of another crop are less c cerned with such matters as the equa zation fee than with the chances of a quate rainfall in the next six mont Though they would like to have so possible relief in the handling of troub some crop surpluses, the farmers thinking more about the price of whe in July than results of the election November.

A King and His Radio

FAR from unique plaint of King Geor of England, as reported by the As ciated Press:

"If I tune in for Paris I get Lond and if I try to get Berlin I get Lond The London station kills everything el I want a set that will get foreign s tions when I want them."

China Going Chinese

FOREIGNERS in the Far East have spre alarms regularly during the past ye that China was "going Red." The C nese Nationalists, as their armies a vanced from Canton in South China the Yangtze Valley in central Chin have been pictured as agents of Bols evism. Now they themselves ha finally given the lie to these charges.

General Huang-fu, the newly nam Foreign Minister of the Nationalist a ministration at Nanking, has announc his policy. Regarding the "unequ treaties" with foreign Powers he markedly restrained.

"Because China's relations have be shackled by unequal treaties for the pa eighty years," he says, "the growth natural, friendly relations has be greatly hampered. In view of such u favorable conditions, the National Government is prepared to revise all t unequal treaties with the Powers in cordance with usual diplomatic prod dure."

Then, in a passage believed to aimed at Moscow, he adds:

"With regard to those Powers seekin to impair China's social institutions, t Nationalist Government will be co strained to adopt and enforce the mo suitable measures to deal with the situ tion."

The Nationalists recently broke relations with Soviet Russia, and this fair warning to any other governme seeking to interfere in Chinese domest affairs.

A declaration of a desire to deal wi all important outstanding cases in spirit of fairness, on a basis of equal and mutual respect for sovereignty, com cludes the statement. This is believe