IN A FEW WORD S An Editor Slips : New K.S.G.: The Papists " Make A Good Show Of It"

Mr. Anslruther's Honour
A LL readers will join with me in con
gratulating Mr. G. E. Anstruther on the K.S.G. conferred upon him by His Holiness. l have only known him personally since he joined our staff as Assistant-Editor, but I can deduce the nature of his whole life's work from his devotion here. Within hail, as it were, of his seventieth year (he was born in 1870) he is a model of all the virtues.
Regularity, assiduity and painstaking conscientiousness in obtaining accuracy in every detail of work seem his outstanding qualities; but these really cloak a brilliant gift for writing and a delightful wit. Taken unawares, he will sing a verse from Gilbert and Sullivan, tell the best of stories or illuminate a whole event with whimsical phrase. It would be utterly impossible to estimate the vast amount of good for the Church which he has done by his self imposed steady and thankless work during a life-time, nor the vast amount of happiness he has conferred on his fellow-Catholics by his conversation, cheerfulness and help in trouble. One feels that the present generation (those born since 1900) will produce few men whose lives will compare with his steady, plodding self-sacrifice (and sacrifice of brilliant but perhaps less useful gifts). Everyone here feels honoured by his presence and co-operation, and our readers owe much to him.
The Cardinal Arrives
ccm RUST the Papists to make a good I show," a Non-Conformist reporter from one of the big papers said to me while we were waiting at Victoria. " It will be spectacular. if nothing else." And so it was. Wonderfully well organised and very colourful. I have only heard three criticisms and I report them for what they arc worth and in case they can, if wellfounded, be avoided on another occasion. In the Cathedral itself there was a good deal of pushing and bustling, and somewhat rough stewarding. It is suggested that this could have been avoided, had there been a priest in the pulpit giving directions. Some noted the thin dresses of the Grail in the street, and wondered why they did not wear their cloaks on a cold evening. Lastly the khaki shorts of middle-aged scoutmasters somehow looked odd. lf have indeed often wondered why scout-masters do not have uniforms more suitable for full manhood, especially on such ceremonial occasions.
With Revolutionary Greetings
REPRODUCE the front page of the I
Communist Party's Christmas Card. Surely it teis a little naive even for them. To invite ordinary plain Englishmen and women to rally round the picture of a sickled and hammered blood-red flag " for a free and merry England," as they put it, is asking a lot. The meaning of the blood-red of Russia's flag has been just a trifle too plain of late in that tyrant-ridden and sad country. Better advised are those who decided to remove the hammer and sickle from the Daily Worker.
Montgomery Belgion
rrALKING of writers and Spain. I was 11 much surprised to see that so acute and friendly a critic as Montgomery Belgian has recently gone out of his way to take a dig at Franco and the Nationalists. Few men I know are better able to show up the fallacies contained in the most plausible modern philosophies, yet he writes : " in dressing up Moslem soldiers•with images of the Sacred Heart in order that they may in holiness kill the sons of Christians, the partizans of General Franco have been guilty of sacrilege, and sacrilegious also has been their conduct at Badajoz, Durango and Guernica." This is a summarized quotation from Maritain's " The Question of a Holy War " in Colosseum. In reporting it, Mr. Belgion carefully refrains from quoting the Editor's note that the Nationalists have officially denied that badges or medals are given to Moors and that an eye witness confirmed the tenth of this to the Editor. Maritain in the heat of controversy—and remember that once you take up a side publicly human cussedness makes you stick to it through thick and thin and argue more wildly as you begin to see the weakness of your position—may still believe the. fables about Badajoz and Guer
nica. There is less excuse for an Englishman who is not out of touch with Catholics and may consult in cold-blood the many authorities who 'have analysed these legends and exploded them.
Artist, O.S.B.
N0 monastic order in the Church can have done more for religious art than the Benedictines, and i for one shall be interested to see, week by week, the drawings which Dorn Theodore Bally, of Prinknash, is to make for the Catholic Herald as illustrations to Fr. Martindale's articles on the Saints. Prinknash Abbey—the abbatial status is an honour recently conferred— counts as one of our youngest foundations in this country, but already the artistic monks of that house have turned out a good deal of art work, both in pictures and modelling. The community there, we must remember, has a history longer than that of the present monastery as such; for the Prinknash monks are the Caldey monks, transferred from their originally Anglican seat on the Welsh island, where today Cistercians minister in the abbey church of Our Lady of St. Samson.
This year brings the silver jubilee of the Caldey community's reception into the Church. After that happy event, the monks remained in their island home until the generosity of another convert, the late Mr. T. Dyer Edwards, opened up for them the prospect of life in Gloucester's beautiful countryside.
Letters To Editor
AN extraordinary example of journalistic practice was revealed in the Courts this week. Some time ago a weekly journal, Cavalcade, printed a letter in which the writer after abusing the Church stated would rather be a Moslem than a professed Roman Catholic." The signature appended was that of a distinguished retired surgeon and knight. The surgeon-knight was indignant as he had never written to the paper and abhorred any aspersions on Catholics. The paper, it appears, had received the letter signed by the common surname of the surgeon-knight and the Hove postmark. Looking up a directory the paper found the knight's name and address and coolly sad
dled the letter on to him. A substantial sum by way of damages naturally resulted.
A Big Department
The " Letters to the Editor very soon becomes a big department of a popular paper, entailing considerable work and very much difficulty. Anonymous letters and obviously absurd letters come in at a great pace, but these are not troublesome. G.K.C.'s Biographer Chosen Straight into the W.P.B. without even being read. It is the good and interesting letters that give the work. Thus this week the Editor of the Catholic Herald has received over sixty letters for publication, everyone of which is publishable and interesting in its way. One can rarely find room for more than twenty. From the mass he has to make a selection according to intrinsic importance, general interest, readability and length—and he has to remember not to give offence by omitting a letter that should have been inserted. A had mistake often entails a whole correspondence, so you can imagine that it is a worrying business with serious enactions attached for errors.
Chesterton's Life
mRS. Sheed has now publicly announced that she has been asked by Mrs. Chesterton to write G.K.C.'s life. I understand that Mrs. Chesterton's choice was much influenced by Mrs. Sheed's two volumes on the Wilfrid Wards. The second volume (reviewed in the Catholic. Herald last week) took her to the War. The Chesterton life will prove to some extent the third part of a trilogy, and carry the story of what she calls the Catholic resurrection " to our own day. Mrs. Sheed asks that letters from Mr. Chesterton should be sent to " Mrs. Chesterton, Top Meadow, Beaconsfield, Bucks." They will be copied and returned at once.
THE JOTTER