March 10, 1934.
THE TABLET u4 W eek ly N ew sp a p e r a n d R e v ie w
DUM VOBIS GRATULAMUR ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS V E S TR IS CONSTANTER MANEATIS
From the Brief of His Holiness Pius IX to The Tablet, June 4,1870.
Vol. 163. No. 4896. L ondon, March i o , 1934.
S ix p en c e .
R eg is tered at the General P o st Off ic e as a New s pape r .
Pase
New s and No t e s ...................2 89 “ Whom Say Ye that T
Am? ”
..............293
The Casts that Failed . . . 294 St. David’ s Day at St.
David’s
.................295
From The Tablet of Ninety
Years A g o ............................ 297 R e v ie w s :
Virtues and Gifts . . . 298 A Tale o f Two Peoples 298 “ Recorded To ” .................298 Outstanding Novels . . . 299
CONTENTS
Page
Books Received ............. 300 New Books and Music . . . 300 L enten P astorals :
Birmingham ............. 302 Correspondence :
Rome (Our Own Corre
spondent’s Weekly Letter from) ............................ 305 E t CiETERA...................... 307 Catholic Education Notes . . . 308 London Matriculation
Results ............................ 308 Ch e s s ................................309
L etters to the E d it or :
Page
“ Nudus, Et Cooperuistis M e ” ............................ 310 “ Missa Recitata ” . . . 310 The Why and Wherefore of Convertions . . . 310 The Maintenance of the
Holy S e e ............................ 310 Ob it u ary .............................. 311 Next Thursday .................312 The Cambridge School of
Catholic S tu d ie s ................. 312 The Grail at Islington . . . 312
St. John Damascene and
Page the Mother of God 312 Coming Events 312 Or b i s T errarim :
England
Scotland
Ireland
313
314
314
China
France
India
Spain
314
315
315
316
Blandford’ s New Church .. 316 So c ia l and P ersonal .. 316
NOTANDA
The End o f the H oly Year. A call to thanksgiving fo r the H oly Eucharist and the priesthood (p. 312).
Charles Dickens’s L i f e o f Our Lord. Praise from strange quarters for an unfortunate publication (p. 293).
St. David’s Day at St. David’s. The Bishop o f Menevia’ s first pontifical act in his Episcopal City (p. 295).
A Lenten pastoral by the Archbishop o f Birmingham, in which His Grace discourses on the holiness and beauty o f Christian Marriage (p. 302).
Manchukuo and her Emperor. A Tablet notewriter on the new State and its ruler (p. 290).
Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith’ s new novel. Its outstanding merits on the technical side (p. 299).
King Albert the Catholic. The dead monarch’ s unfailing loyalty to the Church (p. 289).
NEWS AND NOTES ' I 'H A T the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have
* a surplus to report in his Budget Speech next month now seems certain. There are countless claimants to the money. Income-tax payers are naturally pressing for relief from an overgrown burden which cripples industry. But we are glad to find a strong strain o f unselfishness among our citizens. Provided that safeguards against workshirking spongers are strengthened, most o f us would like the Chancellor to better the verj' hard lives o f those work-wanting but work-lacking men and women whose present doles o f relief barely keep their bodies and souls together.
From the British Embassy in Madrid, Sir George Grahame, His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to
N ew S e r ie s . Vol. CXXXI. No. 4295.
Spain, has written a fine letter to The Times which the Editor o f that newspaper has printed in large type on his leader-page, under the heading “ King Albert’s Moral Grandeur.” Sir George was British Ambassador in Brussels for eight years after the Great W a r ; so he knew the late King of the Belgians well. His testimony is that King Albert’s character “ was formed to cope with great events ” and that “ honour, justice, courage, patriotism and self-abnegation were all to be found intrinsically incorporated in the Belgian K ing.” Explaining King Albert’s austerity, Sir George says that “ at high altitudes, verdant vegetation does not flourish.”
While Sir George Grahame has thus pronounced a eulogy of Albert the Man, Father Yves de la Brière has written in Les Etudes a remarkable paper on Albert the Catholic. Not until now have we understood all the depth and punctilious consistency o f the late monarch’s Catholicism. His replies (August 26 and December 27, 1917) to the attempts at peace-making by Pope Benedict X V will be valued at their true and great worth when the work o f that much-maligned Pontiff receives justice from historians’ pens. After the War, it was King Albert who largely helped to bring about a better understanding between the Vatican and the Quirinal : indeed, his own words were : “ C’est moi qui ai été chargé de m ’aventurer le premier sur la fragile passerelle maintenant jetée entre le Quirinal et le Vatican.”
When Prince Leopold, Due de Brabant and heir to the Belgian throne, fell in love with the Swedish, and therefore Protestant, Princess Astrid, many strains were placed upon King Albert’s Catholic loyalty. He stood firm under them all. Father Yves de la Briere tells us how the famous Dr. Nathan Soderblom, Protestant Archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden’s primatial See, failed to carry out his project o f a Lutheran wedding-ceremony between the royal pair in Stockholm, to be followed by a Catholic ceremony in Brussels. Dr. Soderblom next
