IN A FEW WORDS

Our Mistake !
A GREAT deal of mystification ” was caused last week by the unprecedented happenings to THE CATHOLIC HERALD, which are fully explained on our front page. What I should like to emphasise here in a personal way is the extraordinary kindness, sympathy, and readiness to help shown by everybody. It is only in one's misfortunes that one finds one's real friends, it is said. If so, we have found that some of our critics in more normal times are really our best friends, since almost without exception those who were asked to cooperate in repairing the mistake not only most readily did so, but made it quite clear how anxious they were• to do all that they could. I could quote instances from the highest in the Catholic world to the reader afflicted with lumbago who offered his personal services despite his illness. Oddly enough, we feel the better for it. T dare say the popular Blessed Maria was at work also.
A Fine Effort OUR own staff also deserves public thanks. The rapidity with which an edition had to be called in and another despatched involved an unprecedented strain on a handful of people. Without complaint. indeed joyfully, they all worked for tremendously long hours right into the night. They felt, as did the Directors of the paper, that this was not an occasion for nicely calculating what exactly it was necessary to do ; it was a case of doing all that we could to make up for an error, which, however inadvertent and indeed guarded against, might well deeply hurt and injure a priest universally honoured and respected. (I may say that I can write all this, not only impartially, but, so to speak, from the guilty side. For I belong to the department of the paper which was responsible for the mistake and the part which, as things went. was not faced with the toil and long hours of trying to repair it.) Lighter Moment ONE of the more amusing aspects of the whole business was the curiosity of a news-agency which, trying to find out from us what it was all about, suggested that perhaps our comments on the Red Dean, or alternatively Fr. O'Connor's article on birth control in Japan had got us into trouble.
I must apologise to those few priests who were told they would receive a new edition, but did not, after all. get one.
Compton's Philosophy r AM sure that my reverend I colleague, Father Basset, was as delighted as I was to read Denis Compton's own testimony to the fact that what really worried him about his present misfortune was his inability to play for Middlesex, his county, not his inability to play in Test matches. There goes the true philosopher instinctively preferring the smaller, more intimate and more real loyalty to the wider and more artificial one. Instinctively, no doubt, he realises how the idea of international sport has been worked up and exploited for money-making purposes. To my taste, if Middlesex win the Championship, the West Indies can beat England—though I fear i cannot be sufficiently philosophic to say the same for Australia next winter !
Profitable Hour AVISIT, rather by chance, to Bruton Street brought me, as often London does, an hour or so's intense profit and pleasure. Vaguely remembering there was a French show at Lerevre's, I found myself in a room full of Degas's pastels with the superb A prk le Bain before me. This is a picture one could study for hours if only for the amazing technical brilliance with which coloured chalks have rendered a monumental representation of so casual a subject. Leaving Lefevre's, I could hardly fail to look in next door at Tooth's Gallery, where Stanley Spencer's pictures arc being shown. Up the stairs I saw a fine pencil drawing of John Rothenstein, but in the Gallery was the artist himself, Were I anything of a journalist, 1 suppose 1 would have walked up to him and obtained a " story " for this column far more exciting than any thing I can concoct myself. But somehow this is a thing 1 can never do, and I had to be content with watching from a distance the little painter of such great fame with his rugged, kindly, laughing face. How much I should have liked to ask him what precisely he was after in his Resurrection pictures, of which a number were here exhibited, with the fascinating story they tell of the great day when the tombs open up and men, women and children, still carrying the configuration of their long sleep under the earth meet again in wonder and excitement. Few painters of today—and I am thinking more of his lesser works of scenery and flowers—will teach the learner more of the real craft of painting. An hour among his pictures should he worth a dozen lessons.
Radio Puzzle
THE following electrical phenomenon puzzles me. and perhaps some expert reader %vitt tell
me the worst or the best. Accidentally we discovered when we placed our battery radio set on the dining room table (the better to hear "Take it from Here") that the reception was much affected according to who it was standing behind it. One member of the family almost stopped it altogether. I found I could nearly stop it by holding my hands directly behind it. Others made practically no difference. Does this mean that some of us are likely to be more easily electrocuted than others ? Or does it mean that we possess magical, hypnotic, and (I hope) supra-human powers ?
Sunday Papers I HAVF received a number of rather annoyed letters from readers who protest that they obtain our paper on Friday. and therefore walk out of church on Sunday indifferent to the sellers or the pile of CATHOLIC lieeaues. These. of course, are our most intelligent and sensible readers, and for my part I can, never understand why our people for the most part buy their Catholic papers after Mass on Sunday when they can even more easily get them two days earlier from their newsagent, or,
better still, by post from us. The latter way, of course, comes out at more money because of the postage.
My point was not that many do not buy the Catholics papers, but the
number who do buy after Mass the papers which seem least of all consistent with Mass. One member of our staff noticed a neighbour making considerable headway through one of those papers by surreptitious reading during Mass.
St. Jude's Corner THIS is an unusual case for which A help should be forthcoming. It concerns a Catholic boy of 16 with a rather tragic family history of the mother dying and the father not strong enough to manage the responsibilities of five children. The boy in question who was at an excellent Catholic boarding school is now employed and getting on well, but there is reason to believe that on his own, as he is, his conditions of living may not turn out morally well for him. He is however extremely anxious to become a farmer, and plenty of farmers would be willing to take him. But the difficulty is suitable accommodation with a Catholic family. Employment with a Catholic farmer would be the answer. If anyone in a position to help would like to see the boy would he write to Catholic Herald, St. Jude's Corner, June 9, 1950, when his letter will be forwarded unopened to the person in a position to carry the matter further.
Flat Country SPEAKING as one who lives in the hilly and rather shapeless Weald of Kent, 1 sometimes envy those who are in a position to enjoy the peculiar beauty of flat landscapes. Those who may doubt that beauty should remember Dutch painting most of which represents that flat country. In the South-Fast of England, Romney Marsh possesses that same beauty, and those who know it can never forget it. Their memories, however, may well be refreshed by the pen and brush of John Piper in Romney Marsh (King Penguin, 3s.). I must confess that the artist sees this country very differently from the way I see it, but