We take our stand on the phrase of Pope Benedict XV in his letter to the belligerent powers on August 1st, 1917, that what is needed is ‘a simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments’and it is needed precisely in order to help the nations to an era of peace. No one doubts but that these enormous armaments are themselves a cause of unrest in Europe, of themselves they suggest menace and a doom.

But again it is undoubted that armaments are themselves not so much a cause of evil as a result of evil; they testify to an evil beneath the surface of which they are the outward and visible sign. That deeper evil is the one which is in most need of cure. It would be as unwise to attempt to cure our troubles by mere disarmament as it would be to cure a fever by putting ointment on the resulting rash, for everyone knows that armaments are a symptom and are not the disease.

That disease is selfishness, unrestrained desire to possess. It runs through national as well as international politics, it is to be found not merely in nations but in persons; not just at Geneva or Shanghai but in each of us. A gathering of Christians to protest against excessive armaments is in the nature of a confession. There would be no need to-day to have this meeting if we ministers of Christ had properly done our work. We meet here therefore not first to protest against others but to confess our own failure.

Population is vexation,
Genetics are as bad;
The law of God perplexes me,
And babies drive me mad

Ostensibly to deliver a serious lecture, but actually to spread birth control propaganda, Dr. Marie Stopes came to Oxford. Her talk, which had been announced as a scientific one, soon wandered off into a maze of confusing statistics and sentimental appeal. Having tried vainly to disentangle these elements from the rest of the text, the casual observer must be forgiven for wondering whether Dr. Stopes is ever capable of either scientific or logical thought.

Dr. Stopes, who is a doctor of philosophy and not a medico, is a lively and amusing speaker, as well as a woman of considerable charm, but it is difficult to decide whether she is a sentimental scientist or a scientific sentimentalist.

Taking her audience into her confidence at the very start, Dr. Stopes, very prettily, asked them please to stop smoking, not only because it hurt her throat, ‘but because,’ with a slight feminine flutter, ‘I just don’t like smoking.’ Having taken this womanly prerogative, she launched into her unwomanly subject with considerable vigour.

The Convocations of Canterbury and York having confirmed the terms of the agreement concluded at Bonn on July 2nd, 1931, by the representatives of the Church of England and of the ‘Old Catholics,’ intercommunion has been established between the State Church of this country and a religious body which, however unimportant and numerically insignificant, possesses, nevertheless, a valid Hierarchy and true Sacraments. The terms of this agreement, ratified also by the ‘Old Catholic’ Bishops on September 7th, 1931, are expressed in three paragraphs :

(1). Each communion recognises the catholicity and independence of the other, and maintains its own.

(2). Each communion agrees to admit members of the other communion to participate in the Sacraments.

(3). Intercommunion does not require from either communion the acceptance of all doctrinal opinion, devotion or liturgical practices characteristic of the other, but implies that each believes the other to hold all the essentials of the Christian faith.

Once his emotions under control, Park unfolded the map. He looked for the place where he supposed himself to be; and at the point found a red dot. It was Svillig’s doing; for here and there were translations into Latin, in his handwriting, of the unintelligle words engraved. The country in which the dot appeared was called Regio principis Ednse. Kottatil, on both sides of the Severn estuary, was marked: urbs nostra. London was in the Hertfordshire direction and called Ito. The whole of Devon and Cornwall was forest; and, so far as the map showed—for a word crossed it firmly in heavy characters which Svillig had translated conclusa—quite uninhabited. The whole, saving these explanations, was one bewilderment of straight lines, ragged forms and unknown signs.

Park stared at it all sadly : but brightened when he saw in the minute script, somewhere about Lincolnshire, the words Villa gracilis indicating a small property.

As he folded the map Cuan came in and he asked him the time. The man pointed to a horizontal scale on which an indicator was moving clock-wise to the right. The bar had six great divisions, which equalled together a third of the solar day. When the indicator reached its course, it ran back with a distinctive murmur, not to zero, but to the first of the strokes representing the smallest sub-division (for it took just the time of one ‘second’ to run). The result was that, when the indicator stood midway on the scale, the time was (in our horology) noon, eight in the evening, or four in the morning. At the moment it wanted about a division to noon.

Terribilis est locus iste’ are the opening words of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church and the exceeding power of that phrase is perhaps never more completely realized than when one enters for the first time one of the famous old Churches of Western Christendom. Even a slight knowledge of the awesome weight of Christian thought and tradition entering into its creation, overpowers one, for every truly great temple raised to the Glory of God is a meditation of centuries, written in stone. The continuity of development of our Catholic art inspires us with a deep sense of pride in its glorious past and of responsibility to the future. Because it is a real duty to try to appreciate the vast treasure of Christian expression in all its originality and depth of thought, as it is to preserve and to hand on what is best and noblest in our precious inheritance of the fine arts.