The Holy Father has drawn the attention of all the faithful to Mexico by his appeal for prayers for the Church in that truly distressful land.

What exactly is happening in Mexico? The difficulty in answering this question arises not from lack of matter, but from the confused inability to sort out the overwhelming mass of information that has come from different sources. American and Canadian newspapers and reviews, representing the concern of people who are nearer the scene of all the trouble, are our chief informants, though it seems our own Press is beginning to take notice since we have an article on Mexico in The Times for April 21st.

For the ordinary Englishman, with a taste for reading, Mexico is always associated with the valiant Cortés, whose exploits are cherished memories of our boyhood reading and are familiar to all who have read Prescott’s classic work. Mexico, which presented to Cortés its difficulties in the shape of orgies of human sacrifice, seems now to demand another Cortes to deal with orgies of another kind.

The Faith, planted by the Spanish missionaries who followed in the wake of the conquerors, took firm root; and in the three hundred years of Spanish influence a real Catholic tradition was formed and fostered, so that to-day ninety-nine per cent, of the entire population are said to be Catholic. Racially, the people are mixed. Of its fifteen million inhabitants, six million are pure-blooded Indians, one million pure-blooded Spaniards or Castilian Creoles, and eight million are Mestizos—the offspring of mixed Spanish and American-Indian parentage.

English public men very seldom make any public allusion to the activities of the Holy See. Very few of them give much attention either to its influence or to its policies. Sir Rennell Rodd, however, as British Ambassador to Rome from 1908 until 1919, had ample opportunities for becoming aware of the Pope’s existence as an international force. And in his latest volume of reminiscences, which cover the whole period of the war, he discreetly reveals here and there his own observations and suspicions concerning the Vatican. Indeed, he does not disguise the fact that the information which reached him in his official capacity from various sources caused him constant apprehension during the war. And after the death, in August, 1914, of Pope Pius X (whom he credits with sufficiently ‘humane’ motives to have been likely to develop pro-Ally tendencies had he lived), Sir Rennell quite plainly regards the Holy See as being engaged in constant intrigues to bring the war to an end prematurely upon conditions advantageous to the Central Powers.

The attitude of this ex-Ambassador towards the peace policy of the Holy See is not only characteristic of what most Englishmen of his orthodox and official type of mind felt throughout the war and still feel. It is worth examining more closely because Sir Rennell Rodd, who enjoyed unique advantages for ascertaining and understanding the pacific efforts of the Vatican throughout the war, failed completely to understand what Pope Benedict XV was striving to accomplish.

On the paper covers of this little book we find the following:—

Discussion carried on in the serene atmosphere of this little book invites the like serenity of discussion. If any words, of ours are beyond the right of trank criticism or human courtesy we wish them unsaid. But we feel that the frankness of Dr. Stone’s statement can be rewarded only by as frank a criticism.

(a) In the first place a Catholic, who, like his English forbears of fifteen centuries, is in full communion with the See of Rome, cannot fail to be struck with the title of the book. It is what it purports to be, nothing more or less than the faith of an English Catholic.’ It does not speak for any group; still less for any church.

In reviewing the book, The Church Times (Feb. 26th) calls it a ‘Valuable Summary.’ . . . . ‘The book will be of immense service to both the clergy and the laity, and will serve an admirable purpose in making clear to Protestants and Roman Catholics exactly what Anglo-Catholicism accepts and rejects.’

Because the wages of the workman are not sufficient for his personal needs and the needs of his household, the duty is laid by Parliament on the State of meeting the deficiency, as far as it may conveniently be done. Instead of granting the labourer a larger share of the wealth which labour has created, State aid is given. It really seems that the workman is not to be trusted with a living wage lest he spend it unwisely. And no doubt a large number of our social reformers do sincerely believe that it is far better to stop all pocket money for the working class and let the State lay it out, than to trust the working class with the responsibility of spending all the money it has earned.

But these good intentions of the social reformer are not the economic cause of low wages. Capital—i.e., the investor—ever driven to reduce wages to the lowest level of subsistence, seeks native labour in the dark places of the earth because it is cheap labour; and only cheap labour will procure the dividend desired by the investor. Labour—i.e., workmen—struggling to

maintain a standard of comfort, must needs be at strife with capital when the issue is so plainly set. The investor must have dividends. The workman must have what he can get in the way of wages. To bring wages down, capital, through its federations of industry, orders a lock-out. To resist a reduction of wages, or to gain an increase, the workman goes on strike. These manifestations of class struggle recur.

A person in search of adventure might join a Polar expedition, arrange an aerial flight round the world or found a newspaper entirely dedicated to truth-telling. These adventures are of the more spectacular and expensive kind, and only within the reach of the favoured few. A cheaper way of satisfying the thirst for adventure is to empty your pockets of all your money, dress in the oldest and shabbiest clothes you can find, and make yourself a tramp. This is what Mrs. Cecil Chesterton did—not exactly for the fun of the thing, not in search of romance and adventure, but to study destitution, and to prove to herself that a woman without status and that recommendation which is called a ‘character’ or a ‘reference’ cannot obtain employment in any recognised craft or calling.

We have heard of these amateur explorers into the underworld before. Are they not, we ask ourselves, mere spectators, in, though not of the surroundings they have themselves freely chosen? They go among the outcasts to record facts and register impressions, but they are only onlookers and not outcasts themselves. If any of these thoughts arise with regard to Mrs. Chesterton’s personal experiment, her book, In Darkest London, will dispel them. She says : ‘I left my home one evening in February. I wore my own clothes, which were shabby but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat—and not a penny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle.

Pre-renaissance art is not, as many solemnly declare, unimportant because verisimilitude (truth to appearance) was not attempted by primitive artists. The gargoyles on the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris are not without beauty because, in so far as they represent anything at all, they represent Devils. Neither the camera nor the text-book of moral theology are the test of Beauty. A work of art is not to be judged beautiful in the degree of its likness to anything, nor in the degree of its likeness to something lovable, nor, supposing we deem a woman to be more lovable than a spider, is a portrait of a woman to be judged to be more beautiful than a portrait of a spider. Conversely ugliness in a work of art is not measured by the degree in which the work departs from natural appearance, nor is a work of art necessarily ugly, because it is like nothing lovable.

These misunderstandings are variously felt by different persons and different kinds of work suffer in different ways. Thus painting suffers most, music perhaps least. Most people can appreciate a tune for its own sake, or even a symphony, and do not insist that it shall imitate any natural noise. Few people can see painting in the same way and appreciate form and colour as such, but insist upon imitation and ethical standards, forgetting that neither imitation nor the inculcation of morals is the artist’s business. The musician does not write the poem to which he may be asked to make appropriate music.

A fountain pen, like silk stockings, is a necessity to the poor and a luxury to the rich, and should form part of the equipment of every citizen, so that he may write to his newspapers, fill up his income tax and perform all the functions of good citizenship. It is as personal as a tooth brush and as indispensable; and, with a tooth brush, forms a barrier to the onslaughts of Communism, and an eternal argument against the persuasions of Communists. A man may be willing to share his pipes and a woman her hats, but neither man nor woman will ever lend tooth brush or fountain pen without emphasizing the loan as a deviation from the standards of Christian conduct.

Nationalisation has given us post office nibs, Communism would give us post office fountain pens, and then God help us!

A fountain pen is, if not a man’s birthright, at least a mark of his manhood or that with which he can make his mark. Millionaires have platinum and diamond studded bands, Chinese lacquer and new blue blood ink, the price of which would keep a suburb in vulcanite for a generation, and with these they make trusts and newspapers and all the horrors of civilisation.

A fountain pen is a blessing to possess and a curse to acquire. We go to buy in some vast hall and are bewildered by shapes, sizes and colours. Sancta Simplicitas chooses a plain black shape, but it needs wisdom and understanding to decide between safety, self-filler, adjustable and all the other devices of maids ingenuity.

The ‘Reformation’ was fundamentally a negative movement. It bound together any who had a grievance against the Church. The essential character of the revolt which found its leader in Luther was the refusal to accept the authority of Rome. In spite of many differences among themselves, this still unites the various sections of Protestantism enabling Evangelical Anglicans to co-operate with Modernists and Modernists to make common cause with those still adhering to old-fashioned views of Biblical inspiration. The wide variety of views represented among the signatories of the famous ‘Call to Action’ provoked by the militant tactics of ‘Anglo-Catholics bears powerful witness to this agreement in negation. But no movement can live on denials, and instinctively the ‘Reformers’ felt bound to find some substitute for the authority of the Church. It was profoundly characteristic of their age that they should have fallen back on the authority of the Bible. That age had seen the development of the printing press and a vast increase in the number of those who could read its productions. The mere possession of the sacred volume, together with the ability to spell it out, seemed to give the individual a new and higher status. It encouraged the belief that he was at the source of authority, and held in his hands the key to all wisdom and knowledge—a latch-key which enabled him to dispense with paternal control in the matter of his comings and goings.

Father Vincent McNabb’s The Church and the Land is a book to be read by all who are concerned and anxious about the pressing problem of unemployment. But it would be a pity if our reading of this stirring book produced no effect except a vague feeling that something was wrong and an equally vague conviction that something ought to be done about it. It would be futile to read it as we might read Vergil’s Pastorals—to be thrilled and charmed by the vision of the sower casting his seed, the ploughman turning over his furrow or the harvester swinging his sickle. The flail song in threshing time and the joyous music of the churn when butter is a-making are fine glowing dreams and visions that must not be allowed to evaporate into airy nothings. Every chapter of this book should stimulate into action. Fr. Vincent McNabb describes his work as a bugle-call. Wherefore sound the bugle if there be none to answer the call?

The gist of the book could be given somewhat as follows : There are at the present moment more than a million workers unemployed. They are being paid for being unemployed. At the same time there are millions of acres of good arable land lying untilled; and there are many more acres unworked than there are men out of work.

The practical person will at once say, Yes, but the men who are employed are neither by temperament, training nor inclination the sort of people who would or could till the untilled fields even if it were possible for them to get at them.