ALL SORTS by Fr. Bernard Basset, S.J.

Tackling things the Spode way
NVITITOUT ballyhoo and simply by the excellence of its planning, Spode House has taken a central place in Catholic life. All who go to Spode, love it and return informed and satisfied. Priests, nuns, laymen of all professions, meet each other in the ideal setting while the Dominican fathers, casual, benign and cunning, snatch the chance to fashion Catholic intellectual opinion on up-to-date lines. A Catholic organisation goes up in the world when it stages a week-end at Spode.
It is good news indeed that the Catholic Housing Aid Society is Spode-conscious and that it is planning just such a study weekend. Note the dates, July 19th-21st. Experts will be there to explain mortgages and insurance and also the practical people who can show from experience how the housing problems may be tackled best. This is no conference for those who want houses, but for priests, lawyers, doctors, social workers and for those Catholics who get hot under the collar at the conditions in which many have to live. With Mr. Wade, Mrs. Sheed, Mrs. Walsh, Fr. Casey will be a representative of the National Federation of Housing Societies. Some who want to start branches of the Catholic Housing Society hope to attend. Write at once to the Secretary, 29 Great Cumberland Place, London, W.1., to reserve a place. Catholic Societies worthy of their salt will be represented, for this most urgent problem is, at last, to be tackled in the Spode way.
Teenage Target
The Sunday Times (April 7th) reported a movement now rapidly spreading from Newcastle to other cities of the North. It is a movement of teenagers tired of the commercial squalor of our public life. Francis Magean (17), the spokesman, put it nicely: "Our view has been expressed by adults but we feel that action by young people will make the point more forcibly." Civic minded adults must raise a modest cheer. This is not just a flash in the pan, both the Sunday Times and the News of the World will be publishing next Sunday (April 28th) the views of another such teenage group. This second group, which was also approached by I.TN., sprang from Woman's Year, first mentioned in All Sorts some months ago. Sixth formers in a famous Catholic school initiated what has now spread to many denominations and
to a wide variety of schools. Read the article next Sunday. discuss it. tell others about it, place before conferences of magistrates, teachers, youth club leaders, write about it in the Press, Back to Francis Magean: it is a big moment when a teenager can say publicly that he does not want the present level of sexual morality to become the accepted standard.
Nevett Fund
The Nevett Fund for outcast Indian children stays wonderfully buoyant and £1,963, the year's target, looks like being passed in under six months. Fr. Nevett, in a recent letter, stresses a charming feature for the poor parents and children, crowded in their rotten houses, foster no hope. When he calls to say that Francis or Mary may go to school at once thanks to an English benefactor, this glorious news comes as a complete surprise. It would be worth writing to the Nevett Fund Secretary, 1 Albert Road, Bournemouth, to share iii such joy.
This new Trust passed the Nevett total and topped the £2,000 in three weeks. Gratitude to so many friends for unparalleled kindness cannot be suitably expressed. Yet there is a tong way still to go. Those who have lost the letter, their glasses, their memory or their bank balance are begged to hunt for them, Every effort is worth it to make such a dream come true.
Wirral
I write this from the Wirral, that most friendly part of Cheshire, filled with Liverpool people who feel far away from Liverpool. It is a venial sin in the Wirral to confuse Liverpool with Birkenhead. It puzzles me how the Air Ministry can leave West Kirby R.A.F. station derelict and delapidated, surely they could use it or give it back. British Railways permit dirty grass and scrubby buildings in the centre of a delightful little town. The parish of St. Agnes, West Kirby, has a Holy Week retreat yearly that all may approach Easter suitably disposed. Two hundred rush to church each evening after a journey—dare I say it—from work in Liverpool.
I passed an ancient Austin Seven with this notice in the rear window; "Running Out; Please Pass,'
Tailpiece
After the Family Fast Day connected with the War on Want, one little girl commented : "Isn't it lovely to be feeling half-empty when you know that by it somebody else is half-full".