“He starts as if to make a philosophic statement about the Universe and breaks off with a gruffi disclaimer’’ (E. M. Forster).

It is a fair generalization to say that modern novels, that is, novels written during the past twenty-five years, invite the reader to a discussion of the writer’s personality. It is Conrad’s reticence, above all, that places him as the last English traditional novelist, at the end of the line running from Fielding through Dickens.

It is unfortunate that Conrad’s reticence, his effort at impersonality, should lead to a belief that he has no emotions to reveal. For in popular estimation Typhoon ranks as Conrad’s greatest novel, and Conrad himself has come to be considered as a sort of McWhirr—a methodical sea-dog of settled convictions, but unaccountably gifted with a romantic imagination which enabled him to write sea-stories. And although it is good to see Conrad being republished at all, I hope it will not seem ungracious to Messrs Dent if I register my misgivings at their recent republication of Typhoon, and wish that they had chosen one of his novels (say, Heart of Darkness) which invited speculation as to Conrad’s personality and which was more central in his achievement.

The renascence of Christian art brought about by the Gothic Revival of the last century did not come easily. There were still those who quibbled and spoke of pasticheurs, as though architects who raised Doric town halls and Corinthian façades in the nineteenth century were not pasticheurs.

Earlier, Constable, the painter, had said acidly: ‘A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin. The Gothic architecture, sculpture, and painting, belong to peculiar ages. The feelings that guided their inventors are unknown to us.’ Coleridge, however, with a nobler vision, had said: ‘The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is, no doubt, a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect. ‘ The Classicists continued to murmur. Some suggested that Gothic was a mummy exhumed for exhibition in market-places already slowly greying with the first smoke of industrialism; others said that Gothic was an entirely new, a Victorian, product.

The claims of semantics can be illusory, threatening the innocent answer with unsuspected heredities. There is an ever-present gnosticism, heightened nowadays by the methods and vocabulary of psychology, which sees hidden depths of meaning in very ordinary shallows. Yet there can be no denying that discussion too often ends in futility because it has not been preceded by the definition of the terms to be used. This is one of the most frequent sources of disagreement, for instance, in international conferences: “ democracy”, “free elections”, “minorities”—unless there is an honest attempt at determining what the terms mean, subsequent disputes will derive from the varying interpretation, held doubtless in all good faith, of such concepts.

In the theological sphere, careful definition of dogmatic truths is an essential prerequisite of their discussion. That is why so much zealous work for Christian reunion has achieved disappointing results : good will has been substituted for the often unpleasant task of establishing the basis of discussion. The result in the end is bound to be inconclusive, for the evasion of the primary meanings of the truths of faith must affect even the most neutral attempts at co-operation. It is true that united action on a specific moral issue need not demand an identity of belief in the Blessed Trinity among the participants. Yet in the long run, and inevitably, action can claim no autonomy from the demands of belief.

Hitler’s revolt was not mild. It challenged the entire concept of international lending, and established as the basis of trade the mutual exchange of goods, without recourse to the usurers. There had been pioneers before Hitler. Kemal Ataturk had carried through the reconstruction of Turkey without borrowing a penny from abroad. Mussolini had safeguarded Italian currency against foreign speculators and striven as far as possible to build up for his people a self-contained economy. He was to have successors in Spain and Portugal. After the emergence of Hitler, however, it became clear that the international financial system was in mortal danger and that only by another war could it ever regain control over its vast empire—the empire built and maintained by debt. As it happened, Hitler was only too happy to oblige, and war came. War would have come in any case. As Josef Stalin has put on record: ‘It would be incorrect to think that the war arose accidentally or as the result of the fault of some of the statesmen. Although those faults did exist, the war arose in reality as the inevitable result of the development of the world economic and political forces on the basis of monopoly capitalism.’

Some months before the outbreak of the war, an American Jesuit published an educational study of considerable importance, which has been almost entirely neglected in England. It is time that this work was more widely known, for it is a book for Catholics today and especially for all who teach in Catholic schools. It is the product of first-class Catholic historical scholarship, and is a fine example of a proper use of history. The author ends the book with an induction, from the wealth of historical facts which he presents, as to what are the essential factors in any education provided by the Society of Jesus and describes how these factors can be applied to schools today, particularly in the United States.

This work is remarkable for its dissimilarity to the productions of most secular scholarship and to most secular sociology today. In the first place it leads on, from a specialized and detailed historical research concerned with the foundations of the first Jesuit Colleges and the influences and historical processes leading to the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, to a broad outline of Jesuit practice up to the present day, instead of confining itself to a particular department of knowledge or history supposedly self-sufficient. In the second place the educational policy which is suggested by the final chapter is based on detailed practical experience, and long-founded tradition and depends on a Christian philosophy of life, specifically scholastic philosophy: thus it advises for present-day problems without allowing the solution to be dictated by and produced within the very causes of the problems themselves.