Avery interesting book was once written by an American doctor on the authors and heroes of modern fiction. He submitted the writings of certain novelists of the United States and of these islands to an elaborate study, showing in the light of recent experimental psychology the various complexes of these authors and the public confessions which they involuntarily displayed in their books. Just as nowadays a man should be cautious about telling his dreams at the breakfast-table (an early amusement of the Victorian epoch) since dreams have been now Freudianly tabulated and will reveal at once his inhibited desires; so equally a modern author should be extremely careful how he writes and of what he writes, since inadvertently he is revealing not so much what he does, as what he would like to do if he dared.

From a German Dominican, Fr. Franziskus Stratman, O.P., comes ‘the first complete examination of the problem of Peace and War by a Catholic theologian since 1914’—so the publishers tell us. The result of this examination—conducted most gravely and dispassionately—is not only unfavourable, severely unfavourable, to war in general, it leaves all the wars of history, ancient and modern, condemned by the theologians and finds the makers of war guilty of doing violence to Christian principles. The clear statements of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, of Francis de Victoria, O.P., of Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Liguori, quoted amply and relevantly by Fr. Stratman, prove fatal to proposals for the justification of war. No government in Europe of the nations called to war can be acquitted of offending against justice; so stringent are the conditions of a just war, so many are the rules laid down by theologians to bind mankind in the ways of peace.

It was at the end of a pre-war summer holiday in and around Munich—on September 12th, 1910, to be precise—after the Oberammergau Passion Play and the customary feast of Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner, that I first heard a symphony by Gustav Mahler. The concert had not been included in our pre-arranged programme, for, although my companion had heard Mahler conduct Tristan in London many years before, his own music was quite unknown to us, and we did not realise how important an event in the musical life of Europe was the first performance, conducted by himself, of his Eighth Symphony. We were persuaded by a Bavarian acquaintance to prolong our stay for a few days in order to be present at what we were assured would be a memorable occasion, and we were rewarded by hearing a work and a performance (or rather two performances, for the Symphony was played on two successive evenings, and we seized the opportunity of hearing it a second time) which made an unforgettable impression. Performances such as those two were destined never to bq heard again, for Mahler died a few months later, and no other conductor’s interpretation could quite equal his own, but the work remains, and has aroused enthusiasm in many countries. Now at last it is finding its way to England, and is to be performed at the Queen’s Hall, London, on April 12th next. Mahler’s work has been so much neglected in this country that the occasion seems fitting for a slight account of his life and work, more especially as the Eighth Symphony gives final and triumphant expression to ideas that are gradually taking form and developing through his earlier works.

In view of the General Election, promised for the early summer, political organisations of every colour are girding their loins for the contest and striving to stir up enthusiasm in the electorate. So far, however, it would seem that enthusiasm and even bare interest are lacking among the people in general. Even the possibilities of the increased feminine vote—that uncertain factor which may play such a decisive part in turning the political scales—fail to arouse interest. Nobody seems to care very much what will happen.

Is it possible that this is due, even here in England, to the growth of that contempt of modern parliamentary government which has led several of our Latin neighbours to throw parliaments aside and to set up temporary dictatorships? A very dangerous experiment, fraught with great risks! For, as St. Thomas says, ‘monarchic government is the best form of government; but on account of the great power entrusted to the monarch (whatever he may be called), monarchy easily degenerates into tyranny, unless the one to whom such power is entrusted be a man of perfect virtue.’ However, this is not to say that it is an unjustifiable experiment. Dangerous diseases, whether in the individual or in the body politic, call for drastic remedies; and it is a Gospel principle that ‘if thine eye scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.’ We are of the opinion that, of the two, a military dictatorship is less dangerous than the financial dictatorship with which we are threatened.

Those in Rome who are praying and working for the uniting once again of the Orthodox Church with the See of St. Peter, were encouraged by the sight of the Orthodox Archimandrite and some of his flock who came to honour St. Nicolas at the Greek Liturgy celebrated at the Church of St. Nicolas in Carcere for the closing of the seventh centenary year of the church.

St. Nicolas, called the Wonder-worker, has long been venerated by both East and West. Russia, in particular, has had great devotion to the sainted Archbishop of Mira, who is known as Nicolas of Bari, on account of his body being at that Adriatic port.

The church of this Saint was suitably prepared for his feast day on December 6th by having ikons of Our Lord, Our Blessed Lady, and St. Nicolas placed before the sanctuary where the ikonostasion would have been, had it been an oriental church. The Liturgy was celebrated by the Rector of the Greek College, and five other priests of the Byzantine Rite, including a Russian and two Roumanians, concelebrated.

In Monsieur Vincent, a book which has been much read of late in France, the author, Henri Lavedan, describing the horrors of the Hotel Dieu or chief hospital of Paris from an eighteenth century document, remarks that conditions were doubtless worse still in the seventeenth century. Why ‘doubtless’? Does he believe, one wonders, in the nineteenth century theory of inevitable progress; is each century really better in every way than the one which preceded it?

Many years ago Lecoy de la Marche, in his Guerre aux Erreurs, Historiques, had shown the weakness of this theory when dealing with the very theme of the help given to the poor in the Middle Ages. Both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries far from marking any sort of advance showed a terrible falling off from the standards and the practice of the past.

I suppose that most of us have been reading of late, and reading with keen enjoyment, the excellent translation of M. Maritain’s Three Reformers, which Messrs. Sheed and Ward have published to our common debt. For my part, I have read the book twice already, and I hope to read it again; for good literature resembles fine wine, which no man of sense gulps down in a hurry as does a barbarian, but lingers over lovingly, sipping it contentedly whilst he distinguishes its different merits. I have also read some of the reviews which the remarkable treatise spoken of has occasioned in the press; and it is on one of these—namely, that which appeared recently in The Times Literary Supplement—that the following observations are based. The critique I mention is on the whole a very just one. The writer of it seems well qualified for his task; but there is one remark of his which seems to me highly debatable.

Speaking of Luther, he says : ‘He separates faith and reason (which M. Maritain shows that Luther feared and detested), God and man. Imbued with the spirit of Church discipline and authority, in which he had been trained, he produced the immediate effect of an autocratic Erastianism throughout Germany, and was thus one of the ancestors of political nationalism.’