The notice of German Catholic Reviews in the last number of Blackfriars gave a clear survey of the problems which confront German Catholicism as a result of the Revolution and the establishment of the new National-Socialist State. It would, indeed, be quite wrong to suppose that the attitude of German Catholics to this new order was chiefly one of irritation at the Gleichschaltung of the Catholic Centre Party, or any such secondary outcome of the Revolution. The Catholic’s outlook obliges him to view things in their essentials and to confront them from the standpoint of what is fundamental in his religion. And it is a striking testimony to the true greatness of our religion that it should, by its emphasis on objective truth, awake in co-religionists in other countries such understanding and regard for the present situation.

Children look towards adult life as to a Golden Age. ‘When I am grown-up I shall do just as I like.’ ‘I shall never be naughty again.’ They believe that truly adult life is reached when their majority is attained. Working-class children grow up sooner and for them the age of independence begins at fourteen when they go out into the world as wage earners.

Before adult years have come the dream has faded to some extent. Adolescents see with a clear eye and realize that their elders are not perfect beings. They notice the hasty tempers, the jealousies, and the lack of truth to which so many grown-ups are prone. They see that ‘naughtiness’ can be found in the adult as well as in the young, though often the children are punished for the faults that their elders excuse or ignore in themselves.

Maturity is not a state to which all adults inevitably attain. It is the possession of the few, and there are many who go through life with the outlook and reactions of children. This childishness must not be confounded with a childlike attitude. It is rather the immaturity of childhood without the charm of that state that is displayed and this is especially true of neurotics.

The white gate at the end of the privet hedge is half-open, and you go up the path. Under the hanging wire basket of moss and geraniums in the porch, an Aberdeen cocks his head at you, his little legs stiff, his tail going in little jerks. Through the open doors of the garage the back of a car can be seen; an Austin Twelve, you decide, and this year’s model. The dog moves aside, sniffs at your heels, prepared to be friendly. You scratch him behind the ear, ring the bell, and are shown into a room.

You notice a large map of Palestine on the wall, and examine a group over the fireplace, young men in high collars, tight trousers, and faces that make you think of Three Men in a Boat. There are two clergymen in the middle of the front row, an old one with gaiters, a younger one with a moustache holding a splay-legged fox terrier with two heads. A time exposure, presumably, and the dog must have moved. A coloured picture also catches your attention. A figure in a white robe against an Indian background; the face is mild, the hair long and golden. You remember the smells of the bazaar, the fierce eyes, the armoured car nosing its way carefully but authoritatively through the crowd. And what’s this? a photograph of the statue of a Dominican. Yes, so it is, Giordano Bruno. And you smile as you think of the simple Romans who cross themselves reverently as they pass. Like the Holy Year pilgrims, with their rosaries in the temple of Mithras under the church of San Clemente.

Mr. John Strachey’s book The Menace of Fascism (already reviewed by Blackfriars) is interesting perhaps as an objective phenomenon rather than for any very startling contents. The author thinks quite clearly: he sees in Fascism the triumph of the Capitalists over the inept op position of Labour; he is justly apprehensive of Fascist State-Absolutism; he is logical enough in suspecting that perfervid nationalism (in that it means a hatred of internationalism, and selfish market-hunting) will lead to War. Does the Means Test and the Trades Disputes Act justify the sniffing of Fascism or Nazism? It is early to say, and we have no business with prophecy. Catholics will be (as they have been elsewhere) the first and most obdurate opponents of encroachment upon Democracy—true democracy, that is to say, the only sort of democracy that matters. It is about the nature of democracy that we quarrel a little with Mr. Strachey. His book is prefaced with well-authenticated instances of the recent brutality in Germany, shootings and beatings, the stripping and whipping to death of a woman, and other (one fears) rather representative atrocities. These things Mr. Strachey very justly deplores; and Catholics have not been and will not be outdone in generous denunciation where it is necessary. For all that we have a difference with Mr. Strachey. Very simply it is this. We do not believe that he goes deep enough. Personally I am not moved very urgently to quarrel with Mr. Strachey in his dislike of Fascism. I could, I think, make my copy of the Menace of Fascism even more valuable by cramming its fly-leaves with data about Fascist prisons, for instance, and what goes on in them, what sort of people are sometimes put in them, and generally what sort of things happen to you if you fall out very badly with the Fascists.

A Browse among mediaeval English Christmas Carols is an interesting as well as a seasonable pastime. From such collections of songs and poems as Sloane 2593, Eng. Poet. E.I., Brit. Mus. Addit. 5665, Trin. Coll. Camb. O.3, 58, Selden B. 26, and the Commonplace Book of Richard Hill, the grocer’s apprentice, Balliol 3541—to name not by any means all, but some of the most important sources of our knowledge of the subject—it is possible to gain an insight into the attitude towards Christmas revealed by these pre-Reformation popular songs. These collections, written down in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though many of them were probably composed at an earlier date, have happily survived all the vicissitudes and perils which beset the path of manuscripts. History has shown us that England was indeed no island of saints in those days, far from it. In view of this it is at least gratifying to notice how the carols which bear the undoubted stamp of songs of the people, capable of appealing to all grades of society, are full of the simplest and sincerest piety with an awareness and appreciation of the Incarnation as the basis of the joy which they express. The exhortations to be merry are innumerable, but it is merriment with a difference. No empty unmeaning frivolity, but a light-hearted gaiety founded on a very sure and overwhelming piece of good fortune. The danger has been very real, for

The fifth volume of The New Survey of London Life and Labour and The Unemployed Man are two books which deal with opposite aspects of life among the working classes in London to-day. The former describes the employed working man and relates the conditions of his employment, his wages and mode of living. The latter gives an account of the man without a job, the psychological reaction upon him of his position and the effect of the system of Unemployment Insurance in mitigating his pitiful state.

The New Survey of London Life and Labour is a modern version of the great survey initiated by Charles Booth in 1886, the results of which fill seventeen volumes under the general title of Life and Labour of the People in London. This grand inquest had revealed the horrible fact that during a period of unrivalled national prosperity as many as thirty per cent, of the inhabitants of London— more than a million men, women and children—were living at or beneath the bare level of subsistence. This discovery and the other revelations which emerged from Charles Booth’s survey had a very pressing influence on subsequent social legislation. And to anyone acquainted with the social work of the last thirty years the importance of such a survey in estimating the necessity and incidence of reform must be too evident to require emphasis. The method of investigation employed by Booth was, for those days, exceptionally scientific, but the technique made use of in compiling the New Survey is of a kind to give more accurate results.

A Girl sat alone in Room No. 10 of the Hotel du Corbeau. From the window she could hear a rush of movement and voices, a perpetual, driving rhythm; it was the Rhine. Nothing could be seen except high fortifications and one or two sentries on guard. But the girl waited by the window, listening.

She was used to listening. For more than three years, she had seen none of the events around her, only heard sounds and guessed at their meaning. Now, as she listened to the river, it became the beating of drums and the ringing of the tocsin and the shouting of words which she tried in vain to catch. The old, sickening agony swept over her. Would no one tell her the news? Why wouldn’t they let her go to her mother? And where was her aunt Elisabeth? Then she seemed to be with her mother, aunt, and brother again. It was a shivering January morning, and they could hear from below the barred window, as she now heard from the river, the cry of ‘Execution of Capetel’ But the noise of the river swelled out, growing mad, exultant, and hateful, till it became the noise of the mob one day in September. ‘Mon Dieu, Madame, it is the head of the Princesse de Lamballe that they are carrying!’ Through the confusion, she could still hear those words and see her mother’s face turn into a senseless mask.

When Russia fell under Bolshevik rule in 1917 it appeared as if a civilization had passed away. In 1919, when Fascism appeared in Italy, it seemed at first that this was but another form of Communism, but by 1926 it was clear that Fascism was making good, and the reconciliation with the Holy See in 1929 established it as the great political idea of the age. To-day it is permeating society. The U.S.A. and Germany are Fascist in principle, if not in name. Catholic Austria has set up a Fascist government. Ireland is fast approaching the same position, and a Fascist Party has been established in France. We may well ask ourselves what this Fascism is, and how it has succeeded so quickly in capturing the great nations of the world, with the exception of Great Britain.

The first thing to note is that Fascism and Communism have succeeded in Italy and Russia because their leaders believed in the soundness of their principles and had the courage to put them into practice. The root idea of Fascism is Action, and therefore it is the opposite of Parliamentarianism, which is founded on Debate. Debate is perhaps a satisfactory form of procedure when a landed oligarchy is the dominating power in society, and when the opposing parties have common interests in preserving this power, but when real control has passed into the hands of those who have no stake in the country, and parties have arisen which are opposed on the fundamental question of the form of society itself, it is an impossible position.