THE TABLET

s l Weekly N ew sp a p e r a n d R e v iew 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.

V o l . 158. No. 4 ,7 73 .

L o n d o n , O c t o b e r 3 1 , 1 9 3 1 .

S i x p e n c e .

Registered at the General Post Office as a Newspaper

Page

New s and No t e s ................. 557 Last Tuesday ................. 561 The Council of Trent and the Mass ............................ 562 The Prince of Wales at

Lourdes ............................ 563 The Catholic Directory . . . 563 R e v ie w s :

The Use and Misuse of

Data ............................ 564 The Cardinals of England 564 Alban Butler Revised . . . 566

CONT

R e v ie w s ( Oontd.) :

Page

Fokker ............................ 566 The Lady with the Lamp 566 De Paris ............................ 567 New Books and Music . . . 568 Books Received .................568 From The Tablet of Ninety

Years A g o ............................ 568 Rerum Novarum ................. 569 Ordination at St. Edmund’s

College ............................ 570 The Society of Jesus in

Spain ............................ 571 Coming E vents ...................5 71

ENTS

Correspondence :

Rome (Our Own Corre

Page spondent’s Weekly Letter from) ............................ 573 Et CLe t e r a ...............................5 75 Catholic Education Notes . . . 576 Obitu ary .............................. 576 Catholics in the New Parlia­

ment

The Catholic Evidence Cam­

577

paign ............................ 577 E p is c o p a l Engagements 577 School Sports ................. 577 Orb i s T errarum :

England, Scotland and Wales ............................ 578

Or b is T errarum: (Contd.) :

Page

Ireland ............................ 578 Austria ............................ 579 Belgium ............................ 580 Czechoslovakia ................. 580 France ............................ 580 Poland ............................ 581 Portugal ............................ 581 Russia ............................ 581 Spain ............................ 582 Switzerland 582 U.S.A....................................... 582 So c ia l and P ersonal . . . 584 Ch e s s .......................................... 584

N O T A N D A

Last Tuesday’s appeal to the people. The need fo r a godly as well as a firm and clever Government (p. 561).

Mr. Arthur Henderson’s heavy defeat at Burnley. Its significance fo r all Britain and fo r Christian civilization (p. 561).

The growth o f Communism. Dundee’s Ten Thousand Reds. A word o f warning (p. 558).

Catholics returned to the new House o f Commons. A list o f names (p. 577) ; and some comments (p. 575).

The Encyclical Rerum novarum. Last Sunday’s commemoration at Westminster (p. 569).

Trent and the Mass. The Bishop o f Hebron, in a further article, replies to his critics (p. 562).

False News. The disappointing inertia o f professional journalists (p. 559).

The “ Enosis ” Movement in Cyprus. What do the “ O r th o d o x ” Bishops o f the Island want? (p. 559).

Irregular marriages iiyS cotland. Some unexpected results o f the Brougham A c t (p. 560).

NEWS AND NOTES U NTIL last Tuesday, Britain had a National Government admirable in spirit and aim, but lacking adequate credentials. It is easy to imagine coalitions which could flout our democratic institutions for two or three years, during which time they might cynically observe all the forms of parliamentary government while despotically stripping us of liberty. Indeed, there have been many writers and speakers assuring us that Mr. MacDonald’s third Ministry was no true National Government, but merely an insolent usurpation. To-day the Government is National beyond dispute, because it is broad-based upon the people’s will.

N ew S e r ie s . Vol. C X X V I . No. 4,172.

Never has a General Election enabled the nation to express itself more fully than last Tuesday’s. The Register of Voters was so well up-to-date that it was cumbered hardly at all by accumulations of deaths and removals. As for the issues, the recent increase in the number of improved radio-telephonic receivers brought the speeches of all the party chiefs to the ears o f millions of electors who cannot (or, at least, do not) frequent political meetings. When allowance is made for the sick and absent, as well as for the unopposed returns, we find that four men and women out of every five took their citizenship seriously and recorded their votes. As the electors have chosen a new House of Commons in which about 555 o f the 615 Members support the MacDonald Administration we repeat that the Government is National to an unusual and perhaps unprecedented extent.

Up to Michaelmas, powerful newspapers and renowned publicists were crying out that a General Election before 1933 would be a colossal misfortune and a crime against the State. They had not sufficiently pondered the situation. Before His Majesty so prudently granted a Dissolution, Mr. MacDonald’s three-party combination could not rely confidently on a majority of more than fifty in the Commons. This meant danger in the division-lobbies. It meant also that Ministers had to divert attention and time from their respective Departments to answer the questions and reproaches of a carefree, welldisciplined Opposition, largely professional and over 260 strong. As this Opposition had publicly pledged itself to be an Opposition indeed, our own nation and the world outside would have been kept a-gog by perpetual factiousness and frequent crises. In such conditions, national reconstruction would have become hopeless. All this ought to be obvious. Yet the Head of the Labour Opposition, in his broadcast address three days before the pollings, began b y saying “ No adequate reason has been given why the country should be plunged into the turmoil of a General Election.”