The nomination of the Christian-Democrat, Alcide De Gasperi, as Prime Minister of Italy, marks the breaking of the Liberal and anti-clerical tradition of Italian politics. It is true that the first to be “President of the Council of Ministers’’ (the historic Italian title), in March, 1848, was Cesare Balbo, a Catholic belonging to the Neo-Guelf current, but after him came a series of Presidents, Catholic indeed, but known as Liberals because they stood for the abolition of the rights and privileges of the Church. The true founder of Italian Liberalism—of a conservative type both politically and economically—was Camillo Benso di Cavour.

Once relations between State and Church were broken, and Catholics constrained to follow the system of political abstention (the non expedit), no more opportunities came for the nomination of a Presilent openly professing himself a Catholic, outside the Democratic-Liberal Italian tralition, till the advent of the Popular Party (1919).

The first case presented itself in April, 1920, when the Popular Party had provoked the crisis of the Nitti Cabinet, but then the King chose Nitti himself to form a new ministry. However, through an imprudent move (his decree on the price of corn on the eve of the reopening of the Chamber), Nitti was obliged to present himself to the Chamber as resigning, with all his Ministry. This time the King called upon Giolitti, indicated by agreement of the Right and Centre (including many members of the Popular Party), and Giolitti once more came to the top.

It would be interesting to trace to its origin that hidden language which is familiar to every adult male, and to a large proportion of women, but which is hardly ever written down, except on walls: and to know whether it arose because it is natural to man to use a special set of terms to indicate strange forces more powerful than himself; whether it is a consequence of the psychological disintegration of the Fall, which made human beings afraid of God and ashamed of their bodies; how it has been affected by the immense change in Western human ecology which began about 1750 and is still in progress; why it has flowed more deeply underground at one time than at another; and what significance lies in the fact that its terms, and the knowledge of its existence, have during the last fifty years come far nearer the surface of communal life.

An immense learning would be necessary fully to discuss all these points; and many of their implications have to be left aside by a writer without experience of the organic cultures of the East or of the mechanized economy of the U.S.S.R. It should be possible without this, however, very briefly to sketch the nature, function, and recent history of submerged language, at any rate in this country; and to suggest possible reasons for its slow invasion of ordinary speech.

The language deals mainly with three subjects: with God; with sexual life; and with digestion. God, mystery beyond all thought, all argument, all imagination, “to whom all angels cry aloud’’ and Whom all non-reasoning things worship by being alive; sexual life, through which humans consciously, as other creatures unknowingly, share in the almost incredible Divine activity of creating new selves, each sentient and unique, where before there was nothing; digestion, the unconscious process of transmuting into human bodies pieces of the outside world upon which their continued life depends.

There are some who see in Catholic participation in the Youth Movement a powerful means for stemming the leakage. They recognise that the Catholic club or youth organisation may well be the bridge between the school and the world. It is obvious, indeed, that there is immense gain to our adolescents when they are nurtured in a Catholic atmosphere by those who are solicitous for their spiritual welfare. It would be difficult to overestimate the good that must come from their taking part in activities directed by helpers whose outlook is necessarily apostolic.

But these good results will only be achieved if our own attitude to the Youth Movement is right. We must not regard it as a kind of rescue work, as if there had already been failure in the cultivation of the tender plant. If it is not yet a proclamation of the glorious fruition of youthful endeavour, it must not at any rate continue the artificial forcing that was begun at school, now in the form of an imposed culture and a suggested enthusiasm for social betterment. Our Youth Movement must be a real one in the sense that it is Youth which is making the movement, and not Youth being moved by its self-appointed guardians.

In short, the Catholic participation in the Movement must not be allowed to involve us in a false philosophy. On the contrary, we have in the Catholic youth organisation an opportunity of combating false ideas on “culture”. We can show that any concentration on collective activities, physical and mental, points not to a material life-goal, but to an eternal one. We must emphasise that we are making no pretence to stay the time which is all too surely and rapidly running its course, but are encouraging our young people to make the best use of the vital period in preparation for this life and the next.

Among the more valuable by-products of the recent war was the work which was done in the residential treatment of difficult children. Unostentatiously and quietly carried on, knowledge of this work, as a whole, might never have reached the general public if the Ministry of Health had not published, a year or so ago, a most interesting and informative pamphlet about it. It is with one small piece of this work—Barns Hostel School—that this paper is concerned.

A passing reference to Barns, in a recent Brackfriars, suggested that the school was started by the Q Camps Committee, which had been responsible for Hawkspur Camp. This is an excusable error, but may perhaps take this opportunity to make it clear that the Q Camps Committee is entirely unconnected with Barns House, and has no connection with the Society of Friends; the Q does not stand for Quaker.

The work at Barns Hostel School, however, was initiated by the Society of Friends, and attempted to express Friends’ principles. As Friends have never committed themselves to a credal statement it is not easy to say, shortly and clearly, what those principles are; but at any rate they are likely to be in the nature of corollaries to the one belief that has been described as the foundation stone upon which Quakerism is built. This is the belief in the “Inner Light”—in “That of God in every man”. The authoritative Quaker history claims that all the distinguishing views of Friends flow from this main proposition. It is not possible in this short paper to trace the connection between the various aspects of the work at Barns House on the one hand, and this fundamental proposition and its corollaries on the other.

Dr. Sperry points out, we are each inclined to lift our eyebrows at the other’s problems and close our eyes to our own. The two great denominational differences between the States and Britain are that they now have no established Churches, while their Catholic numbers are about ten times ours. Twenty-three millions makes the Catholic Church in America now the largest of all the religious bodies: though that is surpassed by the twenty-five millions the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ can muster. Catholic growth is largely due to the influx of immigrants from European Catholic countries, and their greater birth rate, but also to the considerable number of converts. What has probably contributed to this growth is the fact that there has been little real persecution on either side; Church and State are separated, and so here is a free field and no favour, in which conditions the Catholic Church is not only winning easily, but it likely soon to dominate the situation. At this Americans are getting afraid, and Dean Sperry, while refusing to give way to any of the lower prejudices, does confess that he appreciates the fears others feel. It is feared that Catholicism, if and when it wins, will want Church and State to be united, and will no longer prove tolerant; though he gratefully admits that the first State to make religious toleration part of its constitution was Maryland, a Catholic foundation. He would obviously see with regret the disappearance of the strong individualist element in religion which Protestantism has fostered, and America, in particular, has emphasised as part of its independent and democratic spirit. He suspects that Catholicism is tempted to favour Totalitarianism. If the Dean fails a little, for all his determination to understand, where Catholicism is concerned, it remains to be wondered if any Catholic could have written such a sympathetic, friendly and understanding book.