T H E T A B L E T
y l W e e k ly N e w s p a p e r a n d R e v i e w
DUM VOBIS GRATULAMUR ANIMOS ETI AM ADDIMUS UT IN INCOEPTIS VESTR IS CONSTANTER MANEATIS
From the Brief of His Holiness Pius IX to The Tablet, June 4,1870.
Vol. 157. No. 4,749.
London, May 16, 1931.
Sixpence.
R eg is tered at the General P o st Of f i c e as a New spaper
News and Notes ................. 637 “ A Minority of a Minority ” 641 Our Lady of the Battle
fields
Page
642
Dr. Coulton’ s Revenge . . . 643 Some Aspects of Probation Work 644 The Cardinal’ s Call to
Youth ............................ 645 Coming Events ................. 645 R e v ie w s :
Canon Green’ s Opinions 646 Athens in War-time . . . 646 M r . Belloc’s New
“ Talkies” .................648
CONTENTS
R e v ie w s ( Oontd.) :
“ Old Unhappy Far-off
Page
Things and Battles Long Ago ” 648 Books Received ................. 648 New Books and Music . . . 649 Catholic Education Notes . . . 650 In Honour of St. Chad . . . 651 Ch e s s ....................................... 651 Correspondence :
Rome (Our own Corre
spondent’ s Weekly Letter from) ............................ 653 From The Tablet of Ninety
Years Ago
655
Page
Wimbledon’s Great Church 655 Obituary ............................ 655 ET CiETERA ............................ 656 L etters to the E d i t o r :
The Casa Di S. Brigida 657 Braille ............................ 657 “ Regnalism ” 657 Unemployment ................. 658 The Church in Asia . . . 658 Or b is T ekrarum :
England, Scotland and Wales ............................ 660 Ireland ............................ 660 Belgium ............................662 Canada ............................ 662
Or b is T errarum (Oontd.) :
Page
China ............................ 662 Formosa ............................ 662 France ............................ 662 Germany ............ . . . . 662 India 663 Oceania ............................ 663 Panama ............................ 663 Poland ............................ 663 Portugal ............................ 664 Spain 664 The Sudan 664 The National Pilgrimage to
Lourdes ............................ 664 W il ls 664 Social and Personal ... 664
NOTANDA The fortieth anniversary o f Pope Leo the Thirteenth’s Encyclical Rerum novarum. Some Mighthave-beens (p. 637).
Sacrilege and arson in Spain. A Tablet leaderwriter defends Spanish Catholics against unjust charges o f pusillanimity. A grave warning to England (pp. 639-641).
Our Lady o f Albert. The Picard town and basilica re-visited (p. 642).
Dr. Coulton’s revenge. The sad case o f a raider caught in his own barbed wire (p. 643).
Nasty films. The Daily Telegraph’s critic speaks out (p. 638).
The Church in Asia. An Archbishop’s up-to-date survey (p. 658).
More leaves from a Probation Officer’s log (p. 644).
“ Open warfare between the Catholic Church and the Labour Party.” The Star prints a strange paragraph and The Tablet answers it (p. 638).
Practising Catholics in the French Chamber and in the German Reichstag. A surprising fact (p. 662).
NEWS AND NOTES B Y the time this Note is printed, the Sovereign Pontiff, if all goes as we hope, will have solemnly received in the Apostolic Palace o f the Vatican, a throng o f his children from all parts of Christendom, and will have spoken to them concerning that famous Encyclical of his great predecessor Leo X I I I , which began with the words Rerum novarum. It is just forty years since the Encyclical went forth from the Eternal City. The Tablet o f that day published the whole o f the Latin text, together with an English version, and an explanatory article by Bishop Hedley.
New Series. Vol. CXXV. No. 4,148.
If the counsels o f Rerum novarum had been more widely heeded, our world would not now be in so dismal a state. What Pope Leo had to say may not have been wholly palatable either to the greedy employer or to the slack and grasping workman ; but it laid down principles on such points as Private Property, the Living Wage, the Right of Combination, and other major points, from which human societies can depart only at their peril. Unhappily, the mere fact that this humane and practical document proceeded from a Pope of Rome was enough to discredit it in many eyes. Continental and atheistical Socialism o f the kind which has only lately begun to flourish in Great Britain, was rampant in certain European countries as early as the eighteen-nineties. The Socialist leaders took fright at the notion of a proletariat— to use their own favourite word— with Catholic ethics for its inspiration. Working men were assured, in terms of contempt, that the Pope had thrown them a few sops to keep them quiet, but that he was really working to prolong the dominance o f the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. In our own land, the absence o f Marxian Socialism was made good— or made bad — by the persistence o f our home-grown No-Popery, and the Encyclical was either belittled or ignored in public by religious teachers and social leaders who privately admired its contents.
Godless Bolshevism, which to-day curses not only Russia but also large tracts o f Asia, and has just been tearing Spain with its red fangs, is in practice the flat opposite o f the Rerum novarum social theory. Leo X I I I taught that a man’s soul is his very own, and that the State, although it has duties towards the families and individuals o f which it consists, must respect all natural rights. Although the Russian State o f to-day was not foreseen by the Pope who reigned in 1891, its usurpation was condemned in advance by Rerum novarum. To undo the copious and hideous mischief which Muscovism has already wrought is impossible ; but at least we can pull ourselves up sharply, and see to it that the
