THE CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH of Doña Emilia Pardo-Bazán has brought a revival of scholarly interest in a great writer who played a significant part in the intellectual and religious life of her age. She was one of Spain’s most enlightened representatives of Neo-Catholicism and Christian Socialism.

A POPULAR RADIO SERIES a dozen years ago, dealing broadly with the important area that is the subject of my talk tonight, was called (borrowing its title from Shakespeare) “Brave New World.” Braver still, in the modern sense, is the commentator who tries in a brief talk like this to deal with even one phase of the vast area, of some eight million square miles, and constituting about one-fifth of the world’s inhabited continents, that lies South of the continental United States. But I am what is called in Spanish an “Old Christian” in these matters, which may be roughly interpreted as the opposite of a “Johnny-Come-Lately,” as our own phrase has it. I have been a student of this area for nearly fifty years, a teacher of one of its languages, Spanish, and of the literature and other written materials published in that language, for more than forty years. During the past four years I have spent my summer vacations on educational missions that took me to all of the American republics except two—Bolivia and Paraguay. In some instances I have made two or three visits to individual countries during that period, supplementing a number of earlier trips, the first of which was in 1916. So I must be as “brave” as the fascinating and to us tremendously important complex of nations that make up the New World outside of the United States and Canada, which for want of a really accurate term we call Latin America.

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS of the Mexican Revolution was the Constitutional Convention that met at Querétaro from December, 1916, to February, 1917. To a Mexico that had been racked since 1910 by the forces of revolution, counterrevolution, and defection, the Constituent Congress called into session by Venustiano Carranza was the fulfillment of numerous promises that had been made in various declarations and decrees issued since the promulgation of the Plan de Guadalupe.

THIS ONE-ACT AUTO, El triumpho de la Virgen, comprises most of Book III of Francisco Bramón’s Los sirgueros de la Virgen sin original peccado, a pastoral novel published in Mexico in April, 1620. It was presumably performed immediately following Mass in the chapel of the Virgen de los Remedios in celebration of this patron saint of Mexico City.

AS A MAN’S SPEECH MIRRORS HIS THOUGHTS, so do a people’s proverbs reflect dominant attitudes and cultural patterns. Many observers have felt that the enormous store of Spanish proverbs should afford great insight into the Spanish way of life. Yet, to the writer’s knowledge, no one has attempted systematically to demonstrate or to reject this notion. The purpose of this paper is to arrange into an over-all picture certain prevalent attitudes and cultural patterns suggested in Spanish proverbs. The original proverbs supporting these patterns are quoted in footnotes. Examples are suggestive, but no means exhaustive, since in many cases the list would number several hundred items.

THE MOST REV. AUGUSTINE SEPINSKI, O.F.M., Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, has named as Director of the Academy of American Franciscan History for a term of three years the Rev. Antonine Tibesar, O.F.M., Ph.D. Since the Academy ranks as a Studium Generale of the Franciscan Order, the appointment of its head is made by the Minister General with his General Definitorium. The decree of appointment, dated at Rome on June 23, 1954, went into effect upon its promulgation. The Director of the Academy likewise holds the office of Religious Superior of the Friary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where the Members of the Academy are in residence.