There are a few perfect settings still to be found in this world. They are the ‘apples of gold in pictures of silver’ of the Wise Man.

Most golden things have quite another setting— like the jewel of gold in a pig’s snout to which the same Wise Man likens the beauty of a foolish woman.

A perfect picture in a perfect shrine, or a beautiful Cathedral in a beautiful City would find a fitting symbol in the first. For the second . . . . ! Quite lately when I saw for the first time one of the most famous historic French Cathedrals of the Middle Ages—a thing of rare beauty—it was this which came unsought to my mind.

The Cathedral, from its jewelled windows to its priceless Treasure, is a gem, but its setting is a mean and sordid town—so mean that it does not seem to know how great a treasure it possesses in its Cathedral. Its eyes have been blinded by a petty and venomous anti-clericalism. It has met with its reward. The historic and aesthetic significance which once made it great in Europe has disappeared, and its only value now in the eyes of the world (with the exception of a few savants and beauty-lovers who are not of this world) is as a place of passage where motors halt for the night and the owners sleep, eating and drinking abundantly, if not choicely.

The condition of contemporary religious art is by no means satisfactory. Periodically the question is raised in the local Catholic Press and discussed from various angles and points of view; letters pour in defending or attacking a certain aspect of modern ecclesiastical art; for a time the correspondence waxes hot, then gradually fizzes out; and all remains as it was, to the apathetic indifference of the great majority of Catholics and the intense disgust of an artistically-minded minority.

It is the limit of presumption for one who is neither an artist, nor a writer, nor a thinker, to broach a subject which has been so ably and exhaustively discussed by competent authorities, therefore this paper is offered with apologies for what it is—the thoughts of an average lay-woman interested in art upon this acutely controversial matter.

It would seem that besides the too obvious truism that ‘a work of religious art has to be religious,’ some principle must form the basis of religious art. We imagine that M. Maritain (Quelques réfléxions sur l'Art Religieux. Art et Scolastique, p. 216) expresses this essential principle when he says:

Mediaeval frescoes and statues were the Bible of the illiterate, and their object was not only decorative but instructive.

Pax Romana is the International Secretariate binding together Catholic University Students, organised in their respective national Federations, for all forms of common action.

From this definition, it is at once evident that one cannot in general become a member of Pax Romana individually. First the student joins the local Catholic Students’ Union or Group of the University to which he belongs, this Society in turn adheres to the National Federation of Catholic Students’ Societies of the country, and finally this National Federation adheres to the International Secretariate—Pax Romana.

Pax Romana is eleven years old. An attempt was made so far back as 1888 by the late Baron de Montenach, at that time President of the Swiss Group of Students, to found such a Secretariate, and indeed a constituent assembly was held in Rome in 1891, but it was found to be impracticable. It was not until July 21st, 1921, that Pax Romana was actually born in the small University town of Fribourg, Switzerland.

At this first meeting of Pax Romana, the Students’ Societies of twenty-three countries gave their adhesion and fifty members represented these groups or societies.’ Since the inaugural meeting of Pax Romana a series of annual congresses has been held. These assemblies have taken place in Fribourg 1922 (for a second time); Salzburg 1923; Budapest 1924; Bologna (the Holy Year) 1925; Amsterdam 1926; Warsaw 1927; Cambridge 1928; Seville 1929; Munich 1930; Fribourg 1931 (for the third time); and Bordeaux-Lourdes 1932. The numbers of the delegates attending have steadily increased, to the present high number of three hundred.

Set up to commemorate the social principles of Leo XIII, there stands in Rome a statue of a modern worker. Its significance is, I take it, unequivocal. Quite definitely it is not what a number of people would like it to be—an expression in stone of those picturesque stories with which the affluent are wont to edify their children about the accommodating fortitude and longanimity of the Destitute. Nor is it merely a comfortable eulogy of labour, an index to the spiritual desirability of mean circumstance (a gift dispensed with suspicious altruism by the prosperous). There is danger to the soul in destitution as well as in opulence. There is a fair distinction between poverty and pauperism. (Blessed are the poor, but in servility there is no virtue.) There is no libel on the Church so gross, yet apparently so ably substantiated from within, as that she encourages an attitude of laissez-faire towards the exploited, or presents economic misery solely to theotechnic treatment and compensation hereafter. A certain type of Christian is inspired by a convenient fatalism in respect of the disinheritance of half the world. Him alone have we to thank for the grossest falsehood of all—that religion is the opium of the masses.

The assertion of a heroic principle is intransigent and eternal. That is why, in speaking of Lenin, I speak first of the .Worker’s statue by the Church of St. John Lateran. Outside Russia there was none in November, 1917, that believed that the reign of Lenin would exceed, in duration, that of Kerensky.

That the murderer of Henry III was Jacques Clément, a Jacobin friar, is certain, although soon after the event some were inclined to doubt whether the miscreant were a Jacobin or no in spite of his habit. The extraordinary story ran that Clément was put up for the night by the Proctireur Général de la Guesle and there murdered in order to obtain his habit to disguise the real assassin, who was a soldier. It is not necessary to kill a man to obtain the habit of a religious and at that time the environs of Paris swarmed with every kind of Order. Again, why a Dominican? Was the Procureur Général especially anxious to make a case against that Order as well as to murder his King? In short the story is incredible in every way and could only have arisen owing to the fact that Clément was killed on the spot. De la Guesle called out that he was not to be injured, although he himself had knocked the assassin down, with a view, of course, for torture to discover who were behind him.

The facts are that Clément exhibited two passports, one of which was forged, when he came to St. Cloud saying that he was an escaped royalist with vital news for the King. Quite early in the morning the friar was introduced to Henry and dealt him a blow which proved fatal within twenty-four hours. By a strange fatality the King had only put on a chamois vest under the violet coat which he always wore, instead of the cuirasse which would be the usual dress during a campaign.