Friday, April 15, 1921, is a day to mark in the Kalendar. We are still so near to it that there is no need to detail the Conferences, Proclamations, Appeals, and Letters which marked the stages of the fever of that hectic week ; enough that on Friday morning the Army, the Special Reserve and the new Defence Force were ready for war, that the Triple Alliance had called on the workers of the country for a General Strike, and that 10 p.m. was to have seen Great Britain as near to the modern equivalent of civil war as at any time since 1642. Yet that night one placard at least proclaimed the general relief. It blazoned one word—Peace.

On the Saturday, the Press offered a bewildered country its explanations. One section had it, in the words of the Morning Post, that “The Great Bluff” of Labour had “failed.” Other papers told that Mr. Thomas had stared revolution in the face and had been too timid—or too brave, which you please— to face it. Others attributed the dramatic end to a realization on the part of the leaders of the Triple Alliance that their men were not staunch behind them. At least one crowned the Premier with fresh laurels. A new Cromwell had saved his country with the threat of something that approximated to 500,000 bayonets. At any rate it was “ peace.”

Lady Sykes in her paper on The Deadlock in Ireland, in the April issue of Blackfriars, said that the Government, in its Irish policy, is treading a path that “will inevitably, if continued, end in the breaking-up of our great Empire.” A patriotic Irishman, faced with the present attitude of the Government towards Ireland cannot reasonably be expected to grow sentimental about the break-up of the Empire. Any Irishman who cares for the welfare of his own country would gladly assist in the disruption of the Empire if that were the condition of freeing his own land from the present regime of organized violence and persecution. The preservation of the Empire should be the concern of Englishmen : and it is well for Englishmen who are concerned about the Empire to remember that, all over the world, in the Dominions and in the United States, there are Irishmen, not only influential but numerous, who are being provoked by England’s present treatment of Ireland into the desire for active revenge. Englishmen may declare that Ireland is a purely domestic question, but they must realize that, if Irishmen scattered over the face of the globe refuse to stand silently by, it may easily become a world problem that men may try to solve by working for the disruption of the Empire.

Everyone who read Purcell’s Life of Manning must have felt that, however fascinating its pages, much remained to be written before a true estimate of the Cardinal’s character could be formed. His biographer was so anxious to expose every weak spot in Manning’s complex character that in spite of the splendid material in his hands the result was a painfully one-sided portrait of a really great man. Unfortunately, Mr. Leslie’s book appears so long after the publication of Purcell’s Life that very few people are still alive who knew Manning during the last decades of his life, and can make a just comparison between the first and the second biographer. Still, there can be no doubt Purcell’s volumes have been widely read, and Mr. Leslie’s work will do much to remove some of the uncomfortable impressions made by several of its chapters. He has been singularly fortunate in obtaining much fresh and rich material for his book, so much that one could have wished he had written two volumes instead of one. Manning must always be an enigma to many people. Conscious of great powers, and filled with a desire to use them to the utmost, in public life he inevitably incurs the hostility of those who resent ability and dub it ambition. In any career with his fine gifts of manner, of speech, of writing, with his comprehensive grasp of human affairs, with his power of managing men, in a word with his practical ability, he was bound to outstrip other competitors in the race for success. In politics, in diplomacy, in the higher walks of business, he would have come to the top, spite of every obstacle smaller men might have put in his way.

On September the 14th, this year, the six hundredth anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, at Ravenna, will be celebrated. It is a significant fact that the revival of the study of the great Italian poet, and of mediæval Italian literature generally, in the nineteenth century was contemporaneous with the “Second Spring” of Catholic life in England. For while it is true that many non-Catholic scholars have contributed to our knowledge of his life and work, it is also true that no one who has not an inner knowledge of the Catholic Church can fully understand the Commedia. To such there must always be, inevitably, something in it that is alien to his mind. For Dante was, first and foremost, a Catholic and regarded everything from a Catholic standpoint.

The argument in his famous political treatise, De Monarchia, and the real purpose of the Guelph and Ghibelline wars in Italy, can be properly understood only from that point of view.

Those protracted wars ended at last, in 1266, after fifty years of swaying fortunes, in the victory of Charles of Anjou over King Manfred at Benevento, and the final supremacy of the Guelphs. Dante was one year old when that decisive battle was fought. The echoes of the long struggle are heard throughout all his writings, for his family were patriotic Guelphs. It must be remembered that the war was not, fundamentally, a strife for mastery between Popes and Emperors.

This question most men to-day would answer with a prompt and confident “Yes.” It will be the conclusion offered in this paper that, in this affirmative answer, fashionably put forward and passively accepted, most men to-day are making an ethical and radical mistake.

At the outset be it noted the question propounded is : “Should money make money?” We are not concerned directly or primarily with the question : “Does money make money?” To that query all your bankers, stockbrokers, politicians and dividend hunters would no doubt reply with a ready affirmative. That query is for the moment beside the mark, though it may be pointed out in passing that even there the commonly accepted view may be anything but the truth. Our question, “Should money make money?” is one of ethics or morals: in other words it is a question of right and wrong.

Now, the problem is really one of exchange, for it is quite patent that of itself money does not beget money. A half-crown, however warmly placed and in whatever well-lined pocket, cannot produce a litter of sixpences or threepenny-bits.

The two words Art and Scholasticism, set down thus side by side, look at first sight somewhat oddly paired. A little book with this title, which is useful out of all proportion to its size, shows that Scholastic philosophy offers a very sound and far-reaching theory of art, and for anyone interested in such questions will well repay careful reading. And who is not so interested? Who but has thought and talked more or less vaguely, and perhaps all the more ardently, about Art for Art’s sake, about the antagonism of Art and Morality, or the identification of Art with Morality, or the dissociation of Art from Morality? At least, after assimilating this statement of the scholastic notion of Art, vagueness will be out of the question ; and when arguments arise they will spring from the very root of the matter, from first principles and metaphysical presuppositions.

Chapters I to V give a detailed analysis of ideas and words ; the rest of the book is a series of deductions from and a synthesis of the clear notions so obtained. If we may for a moment compare artistic production to some marvellous machine, the parts are taken asunder before our eyes and cleaned of dust and cobwebs ; when they are put together again we have the joy of understanding their functions and following their interplay.