There is no more deceptive key to a country than its popular seaside resort. For the pursuit of pleasure is curiously the same, whether it be in Brighton or Boulogne. One has to penetrate beyond the promenades and smart hotels to reach the heart of a nation. Of no country is this so true as of Wales. The English visitor, spending his fortnight at Llandudno or Rhyl, is aware of little that distinguishes these places from their English counterparts. There are probably more chapels, the Sunday restrictions are more puzzling, odd snatches of a barbaric tongue may be heard on country ‘buses. And there are the inevitable comic postcards, depicting tourists battling with unpronounceable names. But these are the most incidental of features. The charabanc tour of the countryside, with its well-worn round of beauty spots, does little to impart the true spirit of the land. The country is but a convenient and picturesque hinterland to the seaside town.

To Catholics, recognition of the individual character of Wales is of special importance. Wales may, in the practice of government, seem little more than an extended England. But it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the accidents of history have wrought a complete and unquestioning submission. This is not to suggest that there is any want of loyalty among the Welsh. Political nationalism is never likely to be a major issue. But there is a loyalty—of culture and of language—that overrides the artificial bonds of a constitution. The survival of this intense regard for national expression is sufficient proof of how deep-rooted are the things of the spirit.

That the problem of Universals was one of the most discussed topics of the twelfth century is an undeniable fact. But to regard it as the keynote of that age, reducing all its activities to a mere concern about that old dispute, as for quite a long time has been the fashion, is as unfair as it is untrue. Recent research has shown beyond dispute that the twelfth century was, on the contrary, an age of extraordinary and comprehensive vigour and witnessed exceptional achievements in all branches of learning. It was indeed the beginning of a new era in the history of Europe and prepared the way, to a large extent, for the “golden age” of the thirteenth century; it was a true “renaissance.” The School of Chartres and John of Salisbury are only two of the striking instances of the general culture of the time.

The most typical figure of the twelfth century, and assuredly the most remarkable one, is Peter Abailard. He is the personification of the genius of that age of quickening and restlessness, with all its virtues and all its defects. Born in 1079 in Britanny at Palais, or Le Pallet, a village near Nantes, from his ancestors he inherited an excellent and prompt disposition to learning. Eager to learn and as quick to assimilate all he had learnt, he excelled in all branches of knowledge, from music to theology, leaving his contemporaries far behind. Mathematics, it seems, was the only science to which he did not feel any inclination: “Ea quoque scientia cuius nefarium est exercitium, quae mathematica appellatur; . . . quia eius artis [arithmeticae] ignarum omnino me cognosco” (Dialect, ed. Cousin, 435, 182). Vain, presumptuous, thinking of himself as the only learned man of his time, of fighting spirit and bitter in criticism of all and sundry, he passed from one school to the other, from Roscelin to William of Champeaux, to Anselm of Laon, only to attack his masters and scorn them to ridicule.

Catholic doctrine rests on two foundations: the revelation of God in nature, and the historic Revelation given to man which culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ.

We have already said something of how God is revealed to us in nature. We have seen that there is not a phenomenon in the world around us or within our own consciousness that does not tell us something of God, which can be so much as explained fully without some reference to a God, a creative, dynamic, supreme Intelligence and Will. The very existence of phenomena postulates the existence of such a One; their varied goodness and beauty tell us something of the goodness and beauty of God.

Yet, what nature has to tell us about God is not wholly satisfactory for many reasons. Although it is a fact that all phenomena in some measure reveal God, it is certainly not a fact that all men have found themselves capable of realizing that God is revealed to them in the world around them. The human mind is commonly too weak, too prejudiced, to be able to penetrate all that nature has to tell it; to see in phenomena the reflection of God’s attributes; to reason out patiently and accurately all that nature implies.

“It is difficult to foretell what will become of our exclusive boarding schools if the nation ever takes seriously the problem of providing secondary education, of one kind or another, for a substantial part of its population, and at the same time realizes how effectively, as well as expensively, in present conditions we educate the difference classes to misunderstand each other.”

The corporate spirit of “Churnside” owed much to the fact that the boys were drawn from widely differing homes and were of very varied antecedents. The original terms of the foundation made provision only for successful scholarship candidates from the County elementary schools, and a few nominated scholars, but the school was early opened to fee-paying pupils whose number steadily increased. No distinction was made between any of the boys; they all wore grey suits provided by the school; their pocket-money was limited and an equal weekly allowance was made by the Governors, from which joint sum “taxes” were levied to defray the cost of those departments directly controlled by the boys; and they all shared in the household duties allotted to them—serving at table, preparing certain rooms for daily use, making their beds and cleaning their shoes, besides working on the games field and keeping sports material in good repair.

Like everybody else who is inane enough to write letters to the paper and put an address at the bottom I get a certain number of circulars sent to me—sometimes even that most exciting of all things, an anonymous letter.

I have therefore been assured in the past six months that the troubles of the nation in general and my troubles in particular are entirely due to drink: and I have of course been assured that I shall get cancer if I continue to smoke, and, inevitably, that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

Three circulars came to me (I wish I could say I found them all together on my breakfast table, it would sound so much more impressive—actually they did come within a week of each other), one telling me that Rome was at the bottom of all our troubles (not the Rome of Mussolini of course, but the Scarlet Woman). I cannot remember all the dark and sinister places in which She was featuring—the Colonial Office was one and the Ministry of Education another (I think), certainly She was responsible for the Soviet —Pope Benedict XV having apparently initiated the Russian Revolution so as to get rid of the Orthodox Church.

The second circular (in order of appearance) told me that Communism was at the bottom of all present evil—not merely the Bolsheviks but everybody everywhere who refuses to believe that every Communist is necessarily an incarnate Devil.

Mucking in Again. Penguin has learned, with some surprise and distress, that his paragraph in last month's Extracts and Comments on Mucking-In and Sanctified Detachment has been interpreted by some readers as a condonation, if not an approval, of “activism,” the secularization of religion, and of the “Americanismus” concerning which Leo XIII had such strong things to say. He has himself, in previous issues (e.g. in November, 1934, August and September, 1935) expressed himself unequivocally on these lines of approach to the position of the Catholic in the modern world, and has constantly reiterated, both in extracts and in comments, that the only effective and specifically Christian and Catholic action in secular society can be brought about only by a deepening of specifically supernatural life. The Christian can pull his weight in the world only by withdrawing from the spirit of the world and, in the traditional sense, despising it. Nor does the policy of “mucking-in” as he understands it, in any way involve, as some critics seem to suppose, approval of the existing order of society—whether it be the Nazism of Germany or the suburbs of England— but it does mean the determined and deliberate acceptance of the existing historical situation, not as our ideal, but as our God-given material. We cannot be too grateful for students like M. Maritain and Mr. Christopher Dawson for their analyses of the evils inherent in that material. We would only draw attention to the danger—and we think it is a real one—that we become so disgusted with it, and so preoccupied with the preparation of our tools, that we neglect to tackle it and, perhaps, find pretexts for ignoring it.

We have seen, in the first place, how indispensably, supremely necessary it is for us to know God—necessary for us even in order to know ourselves and to be ourselves and to fulfil the purposes for which we exist. We have seen too what sort of a knowledge this is—not an abstract, academic knowledge, but a knowledge which we have to live, a knowledge which must permeate our whole being and give unity, direction, purpose to all we think or say or do; that it is also a knowledge of a Person, a personal God; not the knowledge of an abstract science or system; that, nevertheless, if we are to know God we must have some sort of creed, some sort of dogma. Our minds are so made that knowledge cannot be conveyed to us or by us except through words, by stringing together ideas in sentences, formulas, propositions. A creedless religion is an impossibility. We must conclude, therefore, that if the knowledge of God is necessary for us, so too must be dogmas, creeds, doctrines. We cannot do without them.

We must now take our inquiry a short stage further. For we are no pragmatists. We cannot jump to the immediate conclusion that because dogmas work, because they are necessary to our mental make-up, dogmas and creeds are therefore true or even can be true; still less that the dogmas and creeds of the Catholic Church are true.

Peace is not a pause between two wars, like a rather long truce, nor is it a gift passively received and tranquilly kept. Peace must be won, be maintained and strengthened by effort, be defended against those who would disturb it. Peace is a continuous creation in which all share, each through the part he plays in social life.

Mr. Wickham Steed, in his recent book Vital Peace, a Study of Risks, has shown how peace has its risks as war has. There can be no life without risk.

The problem of the risks of life can be considered from three standpoints: the psychological, for each one of us; the national, for each State; the “communitary,” for a united group of States or for the international community in general. In life these various planes are interwoven.

The average upper-class young Englishman at Eton or Harrow cannot envisage a quiet life, made up of study and domestic cares, without the adventure of travel, work in the colonies, the army or politics. Sport is enticing to many, but sport for sport’s sake is worse than art for art’s sake; training in endurance for the sake of bodily agility without a sense of adventure would become a matter of professional exercise, to be despized. All do not feel this urge to adventure. The young working-man, brought up in a Labour environment, becomes a petit bourgeois; the young Communist is or wishes to be a fighter, and does not exclude, at least in theory, civil war. The upper- or middle-class boy tends to adopt a nationalist and conservative ideal.

Habit is one of those things that everyone knows about, but few can correctly define. The common notion of it as the getting used to a thing, finding it easier to do, acquiring a taste for it, or permitting it to get a hold on one, is all very well as far as it goes, but it does not bring us very far after all. Can we hope to make things any better by invoking the aid of psychology and philosophy? Well, of course it is possible in this way to throw some light on the subject, and especially to render it more interesting by linking it up with the more attractive problems of these sciences; but when all is said and done, our ignorance of important aspects of the question will, from the very nature of the case, still largely outweigh our knowledge.

St. Thomas, following Aristotle, has defined habit as “A quality, not easily admitting of change, which modifies its subject, either in the sense of improving or impairing it, in its inner constitution or in the exercise of its activities.” Like all the definitions of Aristotle, this one, for all that it has a rather commonplace air, possesses a really vast depth of meaning.

A habit must not, however, be regarded merely as the sum total of a series of impressions, but rather as the unique and indivisible resultant of them all. It bears an analogy, not so much to a cinema film, with its graduated series of distinct though almost similar photographs, which, when flashed rapidly across the screen, produce the illusion of a continuous motion, as to a composite photograph, the distilled essence of several exposures combined.

This book consists of two lectures, the first on The Normal View of Art, the second on Liberty and Discipline. We wish it were possible to have them delivered and redelivered in every public place (not specially Art Schools) in the English-speaking world; for the principles they enunciate are precisely those which our civilization most completely flouts and most needs to know. Such a wish is, however, not only “crying for the moon,” it would also be no more than “locking the stable after the horse has gone.” It is much too late now to hope for any widespread and deliberate reform of our world; what we must expect is such a complete breakdown of our palpably inhuman and therefore doomed institutions as will place us again in a state of primitive simplicity and barbarism and thus make possible a new growth, and eventually a new flowering, of the human and humane spirit. Meanwhile the existence of such lectures is all to the good. It is, under divine providence, possible that some memory of them will survive to fructify the new dark age which is obviously upon us. “My words shall not pass away,” and the words printed in this book are so clearly conformable to the Word which was in the beginning that we may hope for a like permanence.

To write a “review” of Dr. Coomaraswamy’s lecture is in fact an impudence; the only proper review would be a complete reprint. It has a clarity of vision which amounts to holiness.

In 1829 William Cobbett published the History of the Protestant Reformation. Cobbett was a remarkable controversialist, and his views were always highly coloured, but in this work he disclosed one of the most significant truths of English economic history. He pointed out to an incredulous nation that the social conditions of the English peasantry had seriously and progressively deteriorated since the beginning of the sixteenth century. He attributed this phenomenon to the dissolution of the religious houses at the time of the Reformation, and to the alienation of property which formerly was held for the relief of poverty, and which now passed into selfish and unscrupulous hands.

The pioneer of modern critical economic history was Thorold Rogers. Without acknowledgment and without intention his detailed and laborious researches substantiate Cobbett’s assertions. Thorold Rogers considered that the impoverishment and progressive deterioration of the peasantry between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to a concerted effort on the part of landlords to lower wages in order that each estate’s rent roll might be increased as much as possible. In many instances in his works Thorold Rogers made assertions and generalizations which could not be justified. It appears that later historians have used these errors as a ground for denying the main truth that lies in Thorold Rogers’ theory of social development, and lately Catholic writers have been emphasizing that the accepted economic histories of to-day ignore the established thesis that the condition of the peasantry between 1500 and 1850 was consistently made worse by the individualistic attitude of the landowning class.

One of the greatest difficulties of cinema as an art is that many of its effects can be obtained in two ways—legitimately by the proper use of the medium, and illegitimately by borrowing from the other arts and principally the theatre. The majority of commercial films fall into the second category. From time to time, however, comes a film which stands out from the general run by virtue of its essentially filmic qualities. We experience the peculiar pleasure that is derived from seeing the resources of an artistic medium used as they should be—to produce effects that no other art can produce so well. The Virtuous Isidore and Remous were both films of this kind. And now America has provided an example which is far richer and subtler than either—Chaplin’s Modern Times.

Sir,—My attention has been drawn to an article on ‘‘The Elements of Social Justice” in the November number of Blackfriars, in which the statement is made that “starting with a sub-committee of the Catholic Social Guild, a programme of Housing plans was circulated among various Utility Societies, with the result that a National Council is to be formed under the presidency of the Chairman of the original C.S.G. Committee.”

This statement is incorrect. A sub-committee of the C.S.G. —the C.S.G. Housing Enquiry—was formed some time ago. It sent out a Housing questionnaire which was not sufficiently supported to be of practical use, and the Committee languished. The Chairman, Lady Sanderson, then called a Women’s Conference of societies interested in Housing, to urge the necessity of a Women’s sub-committe to the Central Advisory Committee under the new Housing Act. This idea was widely accepted; delegates from Public Utility Societies, the National Council of Women, the Federation of Women’s Institutes, the Women's Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architecture, Women Housing Estate Managers, Women Pubilc Health Officers and many others have attended the Conferences and given cogent reasons for their co-operation. As a result of the Conferences it is hoped that the Minister of Health may consent to receive a deputation.

It may fairly be claimed on behalf of the C.S.G. that the inception of the Women’s Housing Conference is due to the initiative of the Chairman of its Housing Enquiry, and that she and the other officers of that enquiry have acted as Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Hon. Secretary of the Women’s Housing Conference.

“London was a bumper,” wrote old General Dyott in his diary for 1838, “foreigners in abundance.” Here are some of them. Dr. Mathew starts with Queen Adelaide, 677 tons, a Deptford built schooner-rigged paddle-wheeler with the new feathering floats, riding alongside the stone quay at Calais, and tells of her passengers, most of them crossing to attend Queen Victoria’s coronation. In previous works his treatment has been admired of the little Carthusian world before the Reformation, of the Celtic peoples about Queen Elizabeth, of the English Catholic minority in the seventeenth century. Now he evokes the decade after the Reform Bill: chokers and oysters and muffins and grog, fretwork iron verandahs, the London and Greenwich viaduct railway —“the enginemen are most judicious and the carriages are accompanied by guards in the livery of the company”— steamers so new-fangled that in rough weather it was feared the machinery might break loose.

The book is a delicate and allusive study of the different conventions and temperaments displayed when the vessel runs aground in a fog. Serene round the whist table sits privilege, the Austrian Ambassador, the Russian Envoy Extraordinary, the Minister of the brand-new Hellenic kingdom, and Lady Augusta born a Somerset. A shabby Carlist courtier is less assured, though he stands for a polity older than the Holy Alliance and Badminton House, more defined than the bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe represented in the first-class saloon by M. Gratry. For a European order more ancient and secure, Mgr. Beccaria is writing in his cabin, “in an even light he could see his reports and their weaknesses and their passage through the Congregations in Rome, the venerable prelates and the gradual and sometimes retarded victory of balanced argument.”

Recently the Dominicans of Blackfriars, Oxford, have become possessors, through the munificence of Miss Jean Smith, of a most valuable liturgical manuscript, a Dominican Gradual, which on examination proves to be contemporary with the establishment of the Order’s special rite by Humbert de Romans between 1254 and 1260. Hitherto only four examples have been known to exist, two of which, including the Codex Humbertinus, are in Dominican hands. Now this newly discovered Codex has been returned to the Order that produced it, but whereas the Codex Humbertinus was recovered, during the French Revolution, only at a great price, the Blackfriars MS. was most munificently restored, as a free gift, by one to whom the English Dominican Province thus owes a tremendous debt of gratitude.

The volume was undoubtedly written between 1254 and 1263, seeing that it contains the Mass of St. Peter Martyr but lacks those of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Edward the Confessor, whose feasts respectively were ordered to be celebrated throughout the Order by the General Chapters of Barcelona in 1261 and of London in 1263; whilst the Mass of Corpus Christi, with its famous sequence Lauda Sion, granted to the Order in 1264 has been inserted by a later hand between the de Tempore and the Proprium Sanctorum. The book throughout is written in extremely well-executed lettering, each minuscule letter being 5 cm. high, and there is an abundance of ornamented capitals done exclusively in blue and red, all of exquisite workmanship. The whole consists of 235 folios on vellum, each folio measuring 35.5 x 25 cm.

Mr. Nicholson continues to show, towards the general reading public, that instructive patience which the permanent civil servant must show to his transitory chief. He carries on, in his biography of Dwight Morrow, that implicit instruction in the control of world affairs which he began in the trilogy on Lord Carnock, the Peace Conference, and Lord Curzon.

But his subject here is very different and very unexpected. There is no adumbration, in the story of Lord Carnock, the perfect English civil servant and statesman; in the story of that magnificent aristocrat and administrator, Curzon; no adumbration of the story of the American school-master’s son, who became partner in J. P. Morgan’s, Ambassador to Mexico, was close to being Secretary of State to Mr. Hoover, whose prestige, at the time of his premature death, aged 58, clearly foreshadowed the Presidency, and whom Mr. Nicholson feels bound to call “the completely civilized man.”

There is just one connecting link between this book and the preceding Trilogy, and it is the reason for Mr. Nicholson’s writing it. All four books praise men who sought to attain to a mastery of the technique of world affairs, who sought, in fact, to know the true state of things, who were determined to discard notions preconceived to the accurate, orderly, sympathetic knowledge of them, and who were confident that their intelligences were capable of mastering the jungle-like complexity that faced them. Otherwise, this book differs—by a world—from its predecessors. The scene swings from European Diplomacy to Transatlantic Commerce, from Petersburg to Pittsburg, from Whitehall to Wall Street.