The truth of the crisis upon which England is entering is becoming clear to a growing number of people. In that fact lies the hope of her ultimate regeneration.

Let us summarize the position.

A little more than a century and a half ago, England —or rather her governing classes—plumped for industrialism. That is to say they deliberately set themselves to destroy what was then in the main a land of peasants, owning and cultivating their patches of land and sharing the advantages of the commons, and to convert it into a commercial unit based upon factories and overseas trade. The immediate pecuniary advantages to a limited, number of people were striking. We had a start of the world, and our expanding dominions provided us with an abundance of markets. The richness of the land itself in coal and iron ore accelerated the success of the experiment. The English developed a machine-sense and a money-mind, and the gradual disappearance of her agriculture was compensated for by the large profits made (by the controlling minority) from the sale of manufactured goods. Banks and a huge system of credit grew apace; for they were the life-blood of the new enterprise. The directness of local production of food and clothing for local consumption and use gave way to the dazzling indirectness of a network of exchanges, in which each mesh of the net gave opportunity to the manipulator to squeeze out his little bit of usury. We became the carrying and banking centre of the world.

Those who oppose the acceptance of supernatural truth through the medium! of Faith take up their position, theoretically at least, in the interests of Reason. Speaking largely there are three groups in the opposition. There are those who maintain that the so-called ‘supernatural’ is a mere myth of traditional superstition, rather less crude, no doubt, than the fetishes of uncivilised tribes, escaping the grossness of classical mythology (though lacking the artistic merit with which Greeks and Latins adorned their legends), yet nevertheless merely the more or less finished and elaborated results of a tradition ‘derived from semi-barbarous Hebrew peoples.’ We are told by modern Rationalists that ‘we must cease talking of God in the Biblical sense and, as the foundation of the new order, must supplant theology by mental hygiene. Space is too crowded with stars and universes for heaven above and hell beneath.’

If the supernatural is in truth such a myth, then Faith is mere credulity. It is no better than a child’s belief in bogies and fairies, and is far less excusable because it is exhibited by those who should have the intelligence to know better. Proud Rationalism frowns upon the puerile fantasies of Faith !

The more intelligent antagonists of Faith, however, realise that what is called ‘the supernatural’ cannot be thus easily and conveniently disposed of. To some extent it has to be reckoned with as an aspect of reality. They attempt, therefore, to eliminate Faith on the ground that what is called the supernatural is in fact nothing more than the higher reaches of the purely natural.

The recent Exposition of the Holy Shroud at Turin, after an interval of a third of a century, has attracted a great deal of attention and discussion. Something like two millions of pilgrims passed before the Relic in the course of the twenty days during which it was exposed for veneration. Before the interest thus aroused once more dies away it may be well to try to put on record what it is that we have learnt.

The Holy Shroud differs from all other Relics, with the exception perhaps of the Title of the Cross, in being the principal witness to its own authenticity. It consists of a long sheet of linen, some fourteen feet long by three and a half in width, on which can be seen two imprints, back and front, of a human figure, placed head to head with a space of about six inches between.

Now there are only two ways, as a moment’s thought will show us, in which such a double imprint can be formed on a single sheet. It may be the result of human artistic work, each image being separately painted by a human hand. On the other hand it may have been produced by a human body which has been laid upon the sheet and covered over with the other half, the imprinted image being thus produced by the body itself. There is no third way conceivable in which a double image can have been formed, or at any rate no third way has ever yet been suggested by anyone.

In 1098, Robert, Abbot of Citeaux introduced into his monastery an adaptation of the Rule of St. Benedict and thus grave rise to what is popularly known as the Cistercian Order. From this proceeded such houses as Fountains, Tintern, Melrose, Buckfast and Furness, the last two descending from the Cistercian house of Savigny, as also did La Trappe in France, founded in 1122. In 1664, the ‘Thundering Abbot,’ whom a recent biography has made more familiar if not too attractive amongst us, re-reformed his monastery, not least along the lines of manual labour : hence the ‘Trappists.’ It was these whom Bishop Ricards, vicar-apostolic of the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, begged, in 1879, to come to his assistance in South Africa; and in July 1880, a contingent of fifty arrived at Port Elizabeth. A start was made at Dunbrody. The locality proved too obdurate, and in 1882 the community removed to Durban and thence went inland to what is now Mariannhill. It seems difficult for religious congregations in South Africa to survive satisfactorily as branches of their original group : in 1909 the Mariannhill Traopists separated them selves from the Traopists, and became the ‘Religious Missionaries of Mariannhill,’ a congregation devoted entirely to South African work. Numbering at prespnt about two hundred and fifty, of whom more than half are lay brothers, and predominantly German in nationality, the Fathers work in a very great number of mission stations, not only in Natal, but in the Cape Province and in Rhodesia, confining their work (save quite incidentally to the native population.

Since M. Ferdinand Lot’s vast survey of ‘the most difficult problem of history’ was begun, in 1913, and even since the completion of the French version, in 1921, the movement of events and thought has given it an actuality once suspected only by a few. M. Lot is at pains to discount facile comparisons, pointing out that an economy based on usury is the antithesis of an economy based on credit, that the organisation of the Roman Empire, developed from the city-state and over-ruled by the army, in spite of superficial resemblances, differs radically from any modern government, that the exhaustion of economic resources is not to be feared in the present world; and yet, one cannot read without a continual and uncomfortable sense of precedent and analogv. A footnote, c this was written in 1914,’ has to qualify the statement that progressive economic downfall ‘is a very surprising phenomenon to us, who are accustomed to an ever-growing prosperity.’

As M. Lot shows, even before the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, the Roman Empire was only a ‘ruin in repair,’ disintegrating, in spite of the herculean efforts of a Diocletian, a Constantine, a Theodosius, through ‘the dissolution of its vital forces’ . Wealth is drained away through the growth of ‘tentacular’ cities; the currency, thrice restored, grows increasinglv debased and scarce, and ends by disappearing altogether: taxation becomes a crushing burden, and Diocletian seeks in vain to fix maximum prices for provisions, salaries, and articles of common use.

One of the gravest dangers of the present political system in this country is the acceptance of expediency as the guiding principle of legislation. Moral principles have no longer any practical influence in government. The disadvantages of employing ecclesiastics in high offices in the Government, always greatly exaggerated, had the important counter-balancing advantage of the recognition of moral principles in legislation.

Political ecclesiastics might be corrupt, though there is no historical evidence to show that they were more corrupt than the modern lawyer-politician, business-politician, or demagogue-politician. It would be difficult to show that Holy Orders, per se, are more demoralising than the verbal subtleties of the Statute Book, stock and share broking (or pushing), or even a righteous indignation at the sweating of the working classes.

A statesman or politician in Holy Orders (to-day this suggests the Devil in Holy Water) must, at the worst, make some show of informing with moral principles his public acts and those for which he is officially responsible. He has some acquaintance with moral principles drawn from the Christian code, which is the code permeating our culture and civilisation and therefore not foreign to the minds and consciences of the people. The lawyer, business man or demagogue may be quite ignorant of Christian moral principles, except in so far as he has to adapt himself to the effect of them on his fellows. He may deliberately discard such principles and only permit them to influence his actions as necessary but regrettable expedients.

One of the great questions of the day is disarmament, linked almost involuntarily though not of necessity with war debts and reparations. Appeals have been made for the nation to have the will to peace, and thus save the world from disaster. The ten years long discussions on disarmament have produced so far no very definite results. Nations still believe that without security no disarmament is possible. A pact to renounce war as a means of settling international disputes has been signed by all the leading nations of the world, and yet armaments increase, and preparations for a fresh war are being made, until today more money is being expended upon such preparations, and upon armaments, than was expended before 1914, when the storm broke over Europe and the world. Nations cry peace, when there is no peace in their hearts, as was frankly stated by the present Pope in his Encyclical of 1922.

Why is there no peace? Because jealousies, greed, fear and hatred are still in men’s minds, says the Pope. They have forgotten the moral laws that guide individuals and are equally applicable to nations. All the more need is there for a reaffirmation of the Law of Nations. Up to the Middle Ages men respected the Canon Law of the Church : they looked to the See of Peter as the exponent of the Moral Law, codified as it is on the Canon Law of the Church. That Law of Nations, which is, in itself, the embodiment of the Natural Law, implanted in men’s minds by the Creator, is a guide to men’s lives in their private dealings. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

It is a striking instance of the wondrous ways of Divine Providence that the city whose past renown circled round its false cult of ‘great Diana of the Ephesians’ should be the place whence should be proclaimed to the world, and for all time, the Divine Maternity of Mary, παναγíα θεοτόκος, the All-holy Mother of God.

The Council of Ephesus, the fifteenth centenary of which occurs this year, is in importance second only to the Council of Nicaea. That earliest Oecumenical Council affirmed against Arius the Divinity of our Blessed Lord. This Synod of Ephesus by proclaiming the Divine Motherhood of Mary, affirmed against Nestorius, God-Incarnate, One Person in Two Natures, and that Person Divine.

In the controversies that led up to both these Councils the very existence of the Christian Faith was at stake. It was saved in the one by the test-word όμοούσιος (of one substance); it was saved in the other by the touchstone of orthodoxy θεοτóκος (Mother of God).

Nestorius, monk and priest of Antioch, became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, and soon after, in his presence, the priest Anastasius preached violent diatribes against the term Theotokos.

‘It was impossible,’ cried he, ‘that God should be born of a woman. Let no one call Mary Theotokos, for Mary was but a woman.’ The people were roused. But the Patriarch, instead of showing them that there was little to fear in a term which everyone used, and which had been employed for at least two centuries by great writers, such as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Didymus, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Theophilus of Alexandria, and others, himself endorsed the sermons of his chaplain and began to commit to writing and to circulate widely his objectionable doctrines.

It is idle yet to discuss the prospects of the second Spanish Republic; it is impossible to predict whether it will have as short a life as the first Republic of 1873. This lies not in the new form of government, but in the whole instability of Spanish politics. Before the April Revolution I was of the opinion that it was impossible to take Spanish politics seriously, an opinion which, to my mind, constituted no insult to the Spanish people. Though still persisting in that view, I will admit that recent events make the holding of it perhaps unfair. One thing now emerges as definite; there is no lack of political earnestness among a number of the people, but how large this number really is appears a matter of conjecture.

I was recently discussing the new Spanish situation with a friend who is an authority on everything Spanish. The conversation turned from Spain to the rest of Europe, and I remarked that Germany was a country I much admired. ‘Spain is a country one cannot admire,’ said my friend; ‘but it is a country one can love.’ To a certain extent this is true, in that one can love the country and its inhabitants, yet deplore its politics. When known, Spain is a country one can love with gratitude and joy; it is a country that can exercise an irresistible attraction; and its peculiar fascination, once felt, never fades, but grows ever stronger. Yet it is impossible, when looking back at its political history since the days of the great Hapsburgs, to admire what is only a lamentable history of deplorable government.

As readers of Blackfriars are likely to have and to have read the Encylical itself, we shall have begun to satisfy our duty to our Holy Father if we call attention to some of its main statements and principles.

It is just a little disconcerting that our Holy Father has to acknowledge that gratitude for the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII was not universal even among Catholics. Thus he is obliged to write of the Rerum Novarum :

The same paternal rebuke of Catholics is to be found in another passage dealing with Workmen’s Associations or Trade Unions which had been advocated by Pope Leo XIII :

The movement from the town back to the country is typical of to-day, and the call of ‘the open road’ was never so much heeded in England since the days when pilgrimages were a part of our national life. While twenty years ago only a very few enthusiasts went into camp or took to tramping for the duration of their holidays, to-day these pastimes are rapidly becoming universal. In America and on the Continent—especially in Germany—this movement has become an established part of the national life, and here in England it is on the brink of assuming like proportions. For this reason alone it is at least a matter of interest to Catholics.

Even the staid Nonconformist News-Chronicle has become its sponsor, and there are several magazines, including a new monthly, devoted entirely to the joys and advantages of an informal holiday in the open air. In addition, there are many clubs and similar organisations—both local and national—which have for their end the popularisation of the open road. What is more significant is that the first of a chain of youth hostels—where a night’s lodging can be had for a shilling—was opened at Winchester only a few weeks ago.

It is all so natural and at bottom so right; it is part of that revolution—or revulsion—against the drab gloom of the city that has been steadily growing in intensity for the last two or three decades and has produced, among other things, the Garden City Movement and Mr. Chesterton’s Distributism.

The news that Dominicans—and English Dominicans—are, under the active encouragement of the Holy See, to recommence work in Persia is calculated to stir our blood and turn our thoughts towards that ancient country, and Dominican connections with it.

‘ Behold, I make all things new ’—such is the glorious claim of Jesus Christ and, through Him, of the Church. In the fourteenth century Dominicans, encouraged by Pope John XXII, went out to Persia and did a great work there among the Armenians. So great, indeed, was the expansion of Dominican missionary work in the East, that a special congregation within the Order, named Fratres Peregrinantes,’ was set up, and certain distinctive features in their costume —a red sash or cummerbund, and red socks—marked out its members from the rest. The story of the reunion, effected by our friars, of large bodies of Armenians together with their clergy, is a curious one. So great was the prestige of the Order among them that the Armenian liturgy was abandoned and the Dominican liturgy, translated into Armenian, put in its place. This step proved in the’ long run to have been imprudent. Those who, among the Armenians, had refused to join the movement protested loudly, and with some justification, against so unwise an abandonment of the ancient and beautiful Armenian rite, and this was, no doubt, among the causes wdiich ultimately brought about the arrest and decline of a work so gallantly begun.

On the 19th of February, 1431, when St. Joan had lain near three months in the dungeon of Rouen Castle and the preliminaries for her trial were already completed, Bishop Cauchon summoned the Dominican Jean Lemaitre, Vice-Inquisitor of Rouen, to become his fellow in judging the Maid.

In dismay, evidently realising the irregularity of the whole proceeding, the Vice-Inquisitor takes refuge in a technicality: the trial, though held in Rouen, is considered as taking place in Cauchon’s diocese of Beauvais, whereas his own jurisdiction comprises Rouen only.

Thereupon Cauchon has recourse to the Inquisitor, Lemaitre’s superior, then absent. ‘I pray your Venerable Paternity,’ he writes, ‘summoning and requiring ... that you should come immediately to this town ... Or if you are detained by business so important as to give a real excuse for delay, please at least delegate Brother Jean Lemaitre in your stead . . . .’

Such language argues considerable coercive power. The Inquisitor seems to jump at the plea of other business, but from the 13th of March the Vice-Inquisitor Lemaitre must take his place at Cauchon’s side— though such tardy participation should have been sufficient to invalidate the whole trial.

‘He was forced to come in,’ Nicholas de Houppeville would testify thereafter, ‘he was a prey to great fears. I saw him greatly perplexed and perturbed during the case.’ Lemaitre’s conscience must have sometimes troubled him, for it was he himself who told Houppeville that Joan had complained of the brutality of her gaolers—a brutality it was his own duty to prevent, or rather, to render impossible by removing her to an ecclesiastical prison.

George Moore said of Edward Martyn:

‘There is nobody like him. He is more wonderful than anything in literature.’ This inspired thought becomes vivid in Denis Gwynn’s story of Edward Martyn’s life. The memoir is compiled from extracts, chaotic in their confusion as they were left, from Edward Miartyn’s own writings. The result, however, despite the incompleteness of these papers, is the most enlightening story of the state of Ireland in a period when Edward Martyn contributed to its public life by his work of reform. They were the most vital movements of a reform in Ireland, which might never have existed or begun but for him whose courage, perseverance, learning, independence of mind and indifference to criticism, ridicule and hostility made him the most remarkable instance of what one great man of such qualities can do in the public service of his country.

Religion, literature and art always meant much more to him than politics and he had by nature and by grace an aristocracy of mind, a strong mind which estranged him from many literary friends. Religious by a native instinct, he the layman, was truly the ‘uncloistered monk,’ and he chose to live as a hermit, shunning the world : he lived in a garret, whitewashed and bare, in the tower of his ancestral castle of Tulira. Magnificent in his generosity, he would give all his possessions in the interests of education and the uplifting of his country, and to none was he more bountifully lavish than to him who would be the disciple of his idealism.

‘Originality’ was the sin of this son of Adam, but fortunately or unfortunately he could not hide it.

Equality of function and equality of opportunity will make the world no happier or better. But where there is equality of consideration social peace reigns.

In a flower sepal, petal, stamen, anther, root, each has its contribution to make to the life and sweetness of the flower, and each is concerned in the health of the whole. So in the Christian State everybody is to be somebody, but not ‘ nobody to anybody.’ Each human being is ‘a separate thought of God.’

If a young man is taught to be as attentive to plain and poor girls as to attractive and smart ones, to the governess as much as to the heiress, if he is taught to treat inferior races, when among them, with respect and sympathy, he will be a better man than if he should thrill with the political theories of Harrington, Sidney, Condorcet, or Bright.

The modern child is encouraged by assiduous deference to its ideas and desires to be inconsiderate to others, especially its elders; the schoolboy has a snobbish way of refusing recognition to the claims of ‘outsiders’ or of social inferiors. Whereas it is by his behaviour and special courtesy to outsiders and inferiors that a gentleman is known. A lady also.

Queen Victoria wrote in one of her letters : ‘I was taught to beg my maid’s pardon for any naughtiness or rudeness towards her—a feeling I have ever retained.’

The name Burney,’ Hazlitt once said, ‘is a X pass-port to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it, wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists, are by birthright free of Parnassus.’ And the Burneys were full as loveable as they were cultured. ‘I love all that breed,’ cried Dr. Johnson, ‘and I love them because they love each other.’

Now of books about the Burneys there have been of recent years no end. Most of them, of course, are concerned with Madame D’Arblay, from Austin Dobson’s splendid edition of her Diary to the entertaining gossip; of Hill and Seeley. And her father, Dr. Burney, and her brother Charles, the great Greek scholar, and her sisters, have not passed unnoticed. Yet, until this present time, one hundred and ten years after his death, no one had thought of writing the Life of her sailor-brother James. He has had, indeed, to wait long for his Biography, but perhaps happily, for now that it has come at last it is an ideal one, graphic in style and based on much hitherto unpublished matter, altogether worthy of a man whose career was a romance and who is the connecting link between the great Johnsonian Circle and that other very different coterie of which Charles Lamb was the shining light.

It is probable that many students of liturgy and plainsong shared the scepticism of the present writer on hearing that successful gramophone records had been taken of the chant of the Benedictine Fathers at Solesmes. The gramophone. Yes, we knew it had been vastly improved in recent years, and even before the war, on account of the accuracy of its tempo, we remembered welcoming the day when it superseded the unfortunate pianist thumping in his corner after the carpet had been rolled back for an impromptu dance in the long dining room at home. On those and other occasions, however, considerations of tone and timbre were secondary. Then we thought of later records of orchestral pieces—very successful except for a certain hardness which mattered nothing to the brass but lost a good deal to the strings—and lastly, we recalled less successful vocal items in which the human touch was sorely sacrificed to mechanical accuracy.

And this latest announcement led to reflection on the chant as the monks sing it. We listened again in imagination to the fine diction of the syllabic recitative, the subdued yet thunderous might of the unison, and felt the rhythm as a tenuous pervading atmosphere, which the singers did not create, but rather glided into, as swimmers might into a moving tide. The prayer-spirit which brooded and hovered and soared and sang, could one conceive of it caged up in a machine, however marvellous? Emphatically no.