Mucking in Again. Penguin has learned, with some surprise and distress, that his paragraph in last month's Extracts and Comments on Mucking-In and Sanctified Detachment has been interpreted by some readers as a condonation, if not an approval, of “activism,” the secularization of religion, and of the “Americanismus” concerning which Leo XIII had such strong things to say. He has himself, in previous issues (e.g. in November, 1934, August and September, 1935) expressed himself unequivocally on these lines of approach to the position of the Catholic in the modern world, and has constantly reiterated, both in extracts and in comments, that the only effective and specifically Christian and Catholic action in secular society can be brought about only by a deepening of specifically supernatural life. The Christian can pull his weight in the world only by withdrawing from the spirit of the world and, in the traditional sense, despising it. Nor does the policy of “mucking-in” as he understands it, in any way involve, as some critics seem to suppose, approval of the existing order of society—whether it be the Nazism of Germany or the suburbs of England— but it does mean the determined and deliberate acceptance of the existing historical situation, not as our ideal, but as our God-given material. We cannot be too grateful for students like M. Maritain and Mr. Christopher Dawson for their analyses of the evils inherent in that material. We would only draw attention to the danger—and we think it is a real one—that we become so disgusted with it, and so preoccupied with the preparation of our tools, that we neglect to tackle it and, perhaps, find pretexts for ignoring it.