The political movement which dominates Italy has found in Carlo Delcroix a literary genius whose fame may live with that of Mussolini. Delcroix is not simply a fascista: but his books in their terrible eloquence and beauty are the evangel of that new enthusiasm which gave to Italy an impulse from victorious war that contrasts with the disillusionment that has touched France and made much of England pro-German. Through fascismo Italy found in the war an inspiration, and Delcroix is the prophet of the salvation she has won from ardours and endurances. The People’s War and The Sacrifice of the Word are the titles of his two earlier books, and such words as ‘Holy Sacrifice’ would do as a title for any of them. But the others are Dialogues with the Crowd and Seven Uncanonized Saints.

The theme which Delcroix repeats with variations, and with an increase of mastery and power, is the praise of suffering. In the modern age, and most of all among the admirers of Mrs. Eddy, suffering, against which human nature revolts in any case, has been treated either as cowardice or a delusion. But, as many know, it is not a delusion. To lose one’s hand and one’s eye in one sudden ghastly explosion is, when all is said by Christian Scientists and done by medical Scientists, still a calamity. Faith cannot restore the loss. The agony is acute. That was the discovery of Carlo Delcroix, and the war which brought such a disaster to all the fervours and activities of youth cannot simply be accepted or dismissed.

The part played by Englishmen in the first days of the Franciscan Order seems small, and is perhaps obscured by the fact that its earliest historians were Italians to whom the nationality of their brethren had no importance. One is glad to think that one of the earliest of the followers of St. Francis, ‘secundus in ordine,’ whatever that may imply, and ‘socius beati Francisci,’ was William the Englishman, and that we have before us his beautiful drawing of Our Lord among the candlesticks which was brought to England to be preserved by Matthew Paris. Chroniclers of the Order say almost nothing about him, and the one legend that has attached itself to his name speaks of his sanctity and humility. One wonders how a travelling Englishman, even in that international age when a dialect of French carried one from England to Rome, had settled down in a little Italian hill town, so completely as to leave no memory of his nationality, especially if he was that ‘quidam de Assisio’ ‘secundus in ordine’ between Bernard of Quintevalle and Brother Giles. Or was his anonymity due to a touch of almost jealous affection in Brother Leo and the Companions? When he died in 1232, five years after St. Francis, he was buried in the great church of San Francesco at Assisi, and at once miracles began to be wrought at his tomb with such frequency that the Minister General came to his grave and ordered him in virtue of holy obedience to work no more.

The young are not expected to be wise: there is something uncanny about old heads on young shoulders; but there is so much foolishness uttered about hymns, even by those old enough to know better, that one wonders why the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Undergraduates did not interfere to stop this essay, and the fact that the subject was set for a prize essay is sufficient proof that wisdom in hymnology does not necessarily come with age. You have a form of composition in which the greatest fail, and the second best quail, to wit, the Hymn, the religious hymn, and the next class in order, the academic arbiters, toss it for a bone of contention to the unblooded. What boots it them? What reck they? They are sped.

Doubtless the subject was set to provoke thought and discussion, and thereafter experiment, effort, and practical results. This prize essay scarcely carries out the intention, and incontinent one asks, What were the others like?

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.

Some years ago a Russian stood in painful hesitation on the threshold of the Church. She had reached it after many dark years wasted away in vain endeavours to still the insatiable cravings of the soul and by artificial interests and excitements fill the emptiness of a life, in which God had no place.

The War and the fearful catastrophe, which had engulfed her country, partially opened this Russian’s eyes to the Truth, though as yet it was but a faint glimmer and in nowise the full light. The mind of the homeless exile was captivated by the powerful organisation of the Church Universal, the one stable Rock and haven of refuge, standing alone, proud and unshaken, amidst the hideous wreckage of the contemporary world. The mind had understood, but the heart remained untouched and the spiritual side was not yet revealed to her. Friendless and lonely, knowing nothing of the Catholic England, this Russian would have been lost if at this critical moment of her life a relative in Paris had not put her into touch with a French priest. A correspondence ensued.

For my sins I am condemned to read several papers every day. During the strike my normal supply of reading was cut off, and the only news beyond the usual crop of rumours was that sent out by the British Broadcasting Company and the strike items contained in the various news sheets.

As the strike and its effects constituted the one important topic of news, to the exclusion of the doings of the various notorious personages of no interest, it is probable that the strike news sheets came nearer than Fleet Street would care to admit to fulfilling the true function of a newspaper. When read in conjunction with the official ‘correctives’ and a due allowance for what could be found between the lines, a very fair estimate of the day’s news was available.

On the Tuesday after the settlement, one of my papers joyfully announced that it was able to supply ‘all the world’s news again’ ; on Wednesday another paper reflected that the strike had provided a lesson in ‘what can be done without at a pinch,’ and, remembering that for the period of the strike we had been without any of the usual scandal, crime, divorce, film-star vagaries, fashionable news and eccentricities of the dull people who seek publicity on the back pages, many people will agree.

Now that the newspapers block the letter-box and litter the mat once again, we are expected to rejoice that the indispensable daily printed sheet is once more with us, yet it is difficult to conjure up enthusiasm when the average daily is subject to analysis.

A popular journal, with pretentions to literature and learning, lately held a symposium of well-known novelists. They were set to say whom they considered to be the most tragic figure in history. Says one of the convivials—a lady novelist:

Very few modern biographies cover so wide a range of varied interests and of secret history as these two large volumes in which Mr. Frederic Whyte has collected the intimate papers and the contemporary records of W. T. Stead. The relations between this hopelessly impulsive and quixotic editor and the men and women whom he singled out for special hero-worship give an extraordinary psychological interest to the biography; and none of the great figures who fill its pages stands out more picturesquely than Cardinal Manning in the last years of his life.

The great Cardinal appears inevitably in a somewhat theatrical light in this bewildering book of stunts and moral fervours; but it is clear that he had enough theatrical instinct to respond in some degree at least to the melodramatic instincts of his admirer. And Stead himself, with his complete incapacity for understanding any other point of view than his own journalistic enthusiasms for each new discovery that he made, seems to have been satisfied that the Cardinal shared his own aspirations completely.

When in 1925 the sudden and deeply regretted death of its promoter brought the Dalkey Nativity Play to a close it was thought that an end, at least for the time being, had come to representations of Mysteries in Ireland. The strange fatality so often over-shadowing Irish efforts had, it seemed, struck again at the root, and all that had helped to produce the drama disintegrated. Kindled for a moment by Lady O’Connell the latent artistry of Irish children would be left to smoulder out without a chance of expression. The ‘thing of beauty’ she had built up during four Christmas Seasons and that in its continuance would have inspired other pioneers to work in the same field too quickly ceased to be. No sign appeared of another hand to carry on the torch and to help to establish a tradition. Like a comet, the Dalkey Nativity Play had flashed upon us for a moment and was gone, and only its memory as an artistic creation remained. Then suddenly in the early days of May this year it was announced in connection with the prospective centennial of Blessed Imelda Lambertini that on Whit Monday, May 23rd, two Mystery Dramas were to be produced at the Theatre Royal, Dublin. The Plays, Imelda and Tarsicius, were from the pen of the Rev. H. M. Gaffney, O.P. The first was to be presented by the girls of the Dominican College, Eccles Street, and the second by the boys of SS. Thomas and Tarsicius Altar Sodality, St. Saviour’s, Dominic Street. A choir of the choristers from Corpus Christi Church, Drumcondra, were to render the Plain Chant, and the Orchestra was to be that of the Loretto College girls.

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.

If we are to value St. John’s witness to the Blessed Sacrament as it ought to be valued, we must understand what his words added to the witness of the three Evangelists who had preceded him. Moreover, we must realise the state of doctrine and church order which obtained when the Fourth Gospel was written.

When St. John determined to write yet another Gospel, the Church of Jesus Christ had taken definite shape. In spite of momentary hesitations, here and there it had met denials of its doctrine by quite simple affirmations. At the first Council of Jerusalem it had very definitely taken a step which severed it from the parent womb of Judaism, and gave it a separate personal existence. In contradistinction to the [Jews or Judeans] so prominent in the Fourth Gospel, the Church was now called [Christians]. Not only did men distinguish these two in fact; but they distinguished them in name. The separation between child and parent was complete.

In this process of separation few things if any had been so powerful as the Holy Eucharist. What the sabbath sacrifices were to Jewry the Holy Eucharist was to the Church. To the Pagan world a Jew was a man who refused to join in pagan temple worship; but once a week, on the Sabbath, worshipped in a synagogue. To the same pagan world the Christian soon began to be recognised as one who refused to join in pagan temple-worship; but once a week, on what he called the Lord’s Day, worshipped in his own assembly.

Obvious pitfalls are in the way of one who writes about a member of his family. Friends and foes alike are ready to raise objections, to discount the value of praise on the score of personal bias, to resent criticism on the grounds that, as Jane Find-later says, £ so often there is something between people of the same family like a pane of glass. You mayn’t know it’s there until you try to touch one another, but it divides.’ Relations with whom we are thrown too intimately, in too frequent contact, never see us, according to this view, in perspective.

None of this applies to the different authors of the Benson Saga. The Bensons must have come together as friends even if the ties of blood had not linked them. Frankly aware of each other’s foibles, not one of which escaped the sense of humour which they had in common, they responded just as impulsively to individual fineness. Passionately interested in each other, indefatigable talkers with an avid flair for argument, no subject, no dogma, however controversial, was taboo. At times, Mr. E. F. Benson explains in the latest volume of the Saga, Mother they metaphorically fell upon each other tooth and nail. As a rule, play was fair. But ‘to argue with Hugh on religious topics,’ according to his brother, ‘was like playing Rugby football under rules framed by himself ! . . .’ When things ‘got too hot,’ however, an onlooker would break up the game.

In one of his Studies in Arcady, entitled ‘Christianity and Language,’ R. L. Gales asks himself whether ‘as regards the mass of the (English) people the result of the Reformation may not be summed up in one sentence, “They have taken away my Lord”’ ? The thought has probably occurred to many Catholics that certainly the Reformation took away from us Our Lord’s chosen courtiers and friends, the saints. Before that date in England the names of the Saints were in all men’s mouths, and their images graced many a wayside shrine instead of the modern statute of a parliamentarian or philanthropist. How rich are the Irish, Bretons, Tuscans, and Spaniards in their beautiful saint-lore. Just as any ordinary man loves a powerful friend at court, so do these Catholic peoples love the friends who they know are helping them at the only Court that matters. Accordingly, they still do what our own fathers did—rely on the saints for help in every need. Faith directs the steps of Catholics in their choice of helpers. Our Lady in all things is our chief resource, because she is our mother, and the saints, our brethren, can always be relied on. All sorts of reasons led to the choice of particular patron saints, many of these choices being whimsical enough, but full of affectionate reverence. Countries and towns, arts and crafts, states of life, all have their own distinct protector, but help in sickness has from all time been sought from all God’s saints, though even here circumstances have guided choice of particular patrons, and some saints have by the faith of the people been granted a monopoly of curing certain ills the flesh is heir to.

Ten or half-past get off from Innerleithen Station, southwards, in early days of January. Before you might know it you are over the Tweed, a Scotch river which has already acquired an ‘English accent.’ There is plenty of water in its tributaries, and their little daughters; the whole country is abustle with them. You catch no sight of the beautiful old house as you pass through Traquair Village and cross Quair Water.

The scene soon gets to business. Before you are beyond the last fir plantation and straggling, bad-tempered-looking birches, it is evident that the country is of a high quality; and if you turn to verify the steepness of the ascent, the view of Moorfoot, seldom disappointing, is fine. It is Newhall Burn against which you are walking; the road in time leaves it deep on the right in the valley, the far side of which has become a vast wall of pasture. Only get the sun upon it and any sort of blue sky, and the effect is admirable : the grass tends to be quite pale; the bracken, squirrel-colour of course, provides the striking accent; the heather is sepia, and a scanty element. A few pockets of snow help; as may later the nearly black of a peat cutting; but not the outbreaking stone, blueish. The sheep are blueish too; here is a flock of ewes, watching the departure of a ram, refractory without hope against the tactic of a fine border lad and two young bitches.

The strike and the lock-out are of frequent occurrence in the industrial history of the nineteenth century. What is their meaning? What their significance?

The strike is the refusal of the workman—be he labourer or skilled mechanic, miner or railway man, docker or engineer—to perform his task under conditions that to him and his fellows are intolerable. In every normal case of a strike of any large body of men the ground of the refusal is always stated plainly; either the wages paid are insufficient, that is, are less than a living wage, or the hours of labour are too long. The strike, to put it briefly, is the effort of the labourer to get a larger share of the wealth which he has created; for all material wealth—food and fuel, clothing and dwelling houses, and the thousand and one comforts and adornments of social life, all the conveniences (the ‘damnable conveniences,’ as Father Vincent McNabb has styled them) of civilisation—are created by the application of human labour to the earth and its waters. By no other means can material wealth be created.