‘In view of the approaching General Election, the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales deem it well to remind all Catholic voters of the following principles which underlie the Catholic attitude on Education, so that in giving their votes such electors may act in conformity with Catholic teaching and tradition in this matter of vital importance.

(1) It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.

(2) The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties of citizenship in its various degrees.

(3) The State ought, therefore, to encourage every form of sound educational endeavour, and may take means to safeguard the efficiency of education.

(4) To parents whose economic means are insufficient to pay for the education of their children, it is the duty of the State to furnish the necessary means, providing them from the common funds arising out of the taxation of the whole community. But in so doing the State must not interfere with parental responsibility, nor hamper the reasonable liberty of parents in their choice of a school for their children. Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must be no differentiation on the ground of religion.

(5) Where there is need of greater school accommodation the State may, in default of other agencies, intervene to supply it; but it may do so only ‘in de-fault of, and in substitution for, and to the extent of, the responsibility of the parents’ of the children who need this accommodation.

(6) The teacher is always acting in loco parentis, never in loco civitatis, though the State to safeguard its citizenship may take reasonable care to see that teachers are efficient.

(7) Thus a teacher never is and never can be a civil servant, and should never regard himself or allow himself to be so regarded. Whatever authority he may possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience, comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the State, except in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents.’

I knew a Catholic who married a non-Catholic, and they had three children. One of the children married a convert, one married a bad Catholic, and the third made a mixed marriage. There were seven grandchildren, of whom six were brought up as Catholics, and one, the issue of the mixed marriage, was not. Of the six Catholic grandchildren, one lapsed, one ceased to practice his faith for a number of years, and one nearly lost his faith, but was saved by a miracle of grace.

Five of these grandchildren married, and only one of the five married a Catholic. The lapsed Catholic abjured his faith and married outside the Church. Two marriages were mixed marriages made by the Catholic partners with the best intentions of running the home on Catholic lines, and of bringing up children as fervent Catholics. The grandchild who was born of a mixed marriage in the previous generation, and who had never been brought up as a Catholic, naturally married outside the Church.

The fourth generation numbers eight great-grandchildren, of whom only three are being brought up as Catholics.

In the case of two of the Catholic marriages, the husbands were converts during the period of the engagement. In no single case of mixed marriage did the non-Catholic partner become converted after the wedding had taken place.

We hear and read a great deal about the ‘leakage.’ Here we have a deplorable instance of it. Of the twenty-four descendants of one mixed marriage, fourteen are Catholics and ten are non-Catholics . . . and the tale of fourteen Catholics is only made by including one bad Catholic and two slack ones.

It is always difficult to see a situation from a point of view which has never been ours, and it is sometimes more difficult to recapture, in imagination and sympathy, a point of view which is ours no longer. The more ardent our conviction the more difficult is the task of approaching a situation with the eyes and hearts of those who differ from us. Yet normally the accomplishment of this task is a necessary preliminary to all fruitful controversy. If you attack a man’s strong convictions and, in attacking them, betray your blindness to their influence over his heart and mind, or to the real truth implicit in them, you will produce nothing but irritation and a stronger loyalty to the error you are trying to dislodge. To be able to understand and to show that you understand what his convictions mean to him; to be able to separate in your own mind the true from the false in the things that claim his allegiance, is the only sure way of securing from him a fair hearing for the truth which he lacks and you possess.

In our relations with Anglo-Catholics we are generally conspicuously remiss in acting upon these first principles of fruitful controversy, and our failure arises in part from a quite natural inability to understand a point of view very different from our own. The result is an inevitable feeling, generally inarticulate, that an Anglo-Catholic must be either a knave or a fool. Even when unconsciously present in the mind this presupposition does not make for success in controversy, when we are faced by opponents whose learning and honesty are probably not less than our own.

The general election (conducted with a solemnity and decorum unknown to our forefathers of Eatanswill, the high spirits of age kept in check by the gravity of youth, now for the first time invited to decide the fate of parties and the choice of rulers), having brought the Labour Party into power and given us its leader, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for prime minister, we are assured, with sorrowful shaking of head or with open rejoicing—it all depends on the point of view—that Socialism has triumphed at the polls, and that with a Socialist government responsible for England, the Empire, and things in general, we may expect the worst, or the best, to happen.

So far the ballots cast on Corpus Christi day have neither disturbed the money-changers of the world nor shaken the confidence of the multitude that went to Epsom the following week. The prime minister has chosen his cabinet and formed his government— a ministry of many talents. Socialists of the left, and of the right, veterans of the Fabian Society and the old S.D.F. and I.L.P.; responsible trade union leaders; distinguished university graduates; converts from Liberalism—all are included. Socialists are in office and hold the destinies of Empire in their hands.

But what is this Socialism, which, for better or worse, is the avowed belief, political and economic, of our Labour Government? What in these days does it signify to be called a Socialist? Happily, we may find an answer to these conundrums in the new edition of Mr. Beer’s History of British Socialism, with its complementary chapter bringing the story down to 1928. For the author, an Austrian, long resident in England and an old pupil of the London School of Economics under Professor Hewins, pursued his quest of this illusive British Socialism with conspicuous thoroughness, and his book is of the very greatest value in its interpretation of the facts so carefully set out.

A war between Prussia and France would succeed that with Austria in the logic of history.

I did not doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before the creation of a united Germany.

At the root of it (i.e., the war) was a clerical conspiracy.

Prince Bismarck.

If a united Germany and France can fight in a ring fence victory is virtually assured to us.

von Moltke.

Better the Prussians in Paris than the Sardinian troops in Rome.

But this is my war.

Empress Eugenie.

A war provoked by Prussia would be hailed by many as a welcome relief from internal troubles. So far as I can judge, Ollivier is not a man to shrink from it.

Lord Lyons (May 6th).

Peace has never been better assured.

Ollivier to the Chamber (June 30th).

Never has the political sky been so clear of clouds.

Mr. Hammond (Permanent Under-Secretary to Lord Granville) when he succeeded the Earl of Clarendon (July 5th).

If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to withdraw, it is war forthwith, and in a few days we are over the Rhine.

de Gramont (July 12th).

This is the most national war in which France has been involved. I can only rule if I lead, and I am borne away on a torrent which I am powerless to stem or control.

Napoleon III (July 15th).

The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland has issued a very beautiful book by way of accompaniment to the Centenary celebrations which took place in Dublin from the igth to the 23rd of June. The lucky person who obtains a copy will hesitate about lending it lest the borrower be tempted to hold it for keeps. It is excellently printed and well illustrated, and we feel that photography is put to the purpose for which surely it was intended when we see these pictures of exquisite works of art such as the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell, the Ardagh Chalice, the Cross of Cong and manuscript pages of the fine script peculiar to Ireland. The book is worth having for these photographs alone; but that is not to say that the letterpress is not all of a piece with the setting of the book. The articles are of a uniformly high standard, eminently readable and written with the easy grace, dignity and restraint which are the accompaniments of unconscious art. If this is a fruit of the New Ireland, then even our worst foes will not be able to withhold their grateful assent to emancipation as a thing of joy.