Godless Schools and Crime

The Providence Visitor

Eminent educators, both Catholic and Protestant, insist that the underlying cause of all our social corruption is the lack of religious training in the public schools of the country. This is a harsh. saying; but it is true nevertheless. Because religion has been relegated in our educational curriculum to the shelves along with the myths of antiquity, men have learned to regard the dollar more than conscience in their dealings one with another. The fact that religion is ignored in the schools quite naturally leads the youth to despise religion as if it were unworthy the consideration of an educated man. Young men grow up to imagine that religion bears about the same proportion to worldly success as a half-hour spent in Sunday school bears to seven days in the week. From want of exercise conscience becomes flabby, diseased, and finally dwindles away to nothing. The last result is disregard of man's most essential obligations, desecration of the sacrament of marriage and rottenness in social and financial circles as we have it to-day. No other result could be expected from a system of education in which God is ignored. How is a man to judge between right and wrong if he has never been trained to know the meaning of right and wrong? How will he resist the temptations of life if he has learned by force of circumstances to regard stealing as a legitimate means of making money?

We have here a convincing plea for the parochial school system. The parochial schools will not, of course, banish all evil. Not even God Himself can do that as long as man is free to do as he pleases. But we can challenge contradiction in saying that no such widespread corruption can be found among those who have been educated according to Catholic ideals. The few renegades here and there attract attention only be

cause they are singular exceptions to the general rule.

Catholic parents will do well to consider these facts in caring for the education of their children.

Mind Triumphant Over Morals

The Pilot

For many decades Catholic educators have been dwelling on the danger to the community of the trained mind conjoined with the untrained heart and conscience, and for more than a decade. and a half the more thoughtful of nonCatholic teachers and publicists have been taking up the same theme. Crimes such as are possible only to acute and highly trained intelligences are woefully on the increase among us.

With the revelations of money representing the most sacred of earthly trusts provision for the widow and orphan— speculated with so as to bring in a more royal income to the heads of great insurance companies, or paid out to managers of a political campaign to secure special legislation; with the multiplying of corporations which can fleece the poor and the wage-earners with prospectuses of fabled inexhaustible mines, while their directors get rich and keep out of prison through some clever phrasing of the charters under which they transact business; with the Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," displaced by another of contrary spirit, "Thou shalt have a legal title to ill-gotten goods," with benefactions to secular education out of the grinding of the poor, it is not to be wondered at that the attainment of wealth has become the chief end of man to the masses, and that Socialism flourishes where man is hopeless of attaining that end.

The lack of moral principle is admitted on all sides to be the disease which menaces our national life. “The sin of injustice is the sin of the age."

Mind has triumphed over morals to so large an extent among us that faith in

God and a wholesome fear of man's eventual accountability to His Creator are no longer motives of action or moral restraints among a large proportion of our population. The heaven they read of and dream of is that of the multi-millionaire, with his half-a-dozen palaces in Europe and America; their hell is to thirst for riches and luxury and be baffled in attempt to attain them. Vain to preach moral rectitude without laying. the spiritual foundation for it; vain to expect worthy works when the motive power of a living faith is gone.

Alcoholic Nostrums

The Church Progress

The bad whisky nostrums with which the country is flooded have at last come to grief. The Federal government has taken them in hand and there is gloom among the compounders of the same. It would seem that an end has come to the making of millionaires from this nefarious business, and the deluded public is in a position to be congratulated.

Collectors of internal revenue have been notified by the Commissioner that after December next, the manufacturers of these "health-giving, life-restoring" compounds will be obliged to pay the special tax for rectifiers and liquor dealers, and the retailers of the same must pay the special tax for liquor dealers. The fact that the manufacturer's formula will not be accepted as final, but that there will be a chemical examination of the nostrums purchased in the open market, indicates that the government is in earnest if there be doubt on the question.

This notification of the purpose of the government through the Commissioner of Internal Revenue should be a matter for general congratulation. While it protects the public from a dangerous class of medicine fakirs, it also puts a stop to drugging the people with doses. of low-grade whisky.

The purpose of the government is announced none too soon. We see but one thing yet required and that is a Federal enactment requiring under severe penalties that all such nostrums shall be plainly and truthfully labeled with their contents.

The Holy Name Society

The Ave Maria

Ever since President Roosevelt, two years ago, addressed the Holy Name Society of Brooklyn in a sterling lay sermon on the weakness and indecency of profanity, we have noticed that the secular press of the country has been taking a more and more sympathetic attitude toward this particular association. of Catholic manhood. The Buffalo Express is quoted as recently saying:

"The Holy Name Society is a Catholic organization which deserves the support of clean-minded men in every denomination and outside of all denominations. Its purpose is to protest against 'blasphemy and profanity.' Eighteen thousand members of the Society paraded in Brooklyn last Sunday."

There is no reason why the purposes of the Holy Name Society should not be as dear to non-Catholics as to Catholics. As Mr. Roosevelt said on the occasion referred to above: "Men should remember that they can not retain their self-respect if they are loose and foul of tongue, and that a man who is to lead a clean and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and honorable." Profanity, be it remarked, is an unutterably unprofitable habit. Violations of some of God's commandments bring with them at least a temporary gratification; but what conceivable pleasure can be extracted from the flippant pronouncing of the Holy Name? Yet how many are addicted to this reprehensible habit, and how few bestir themselves earnestly in the genuine endeavor to observe more faithfully the Second Commandment!

His palace of ice covered the peak of a huge and monstrous berg. Northern lights played around it and terrific winds forever swept through its vast and frozen halls.

In the vastest, coldest hall of this palace sat the King, enthroned. His garments, his long white hair and beard, were covered with the frost of centuries. He never spoke, he never stirred, but gazed with cold, gray eyes at those who passed his throne, and those trembled at the glance of Iceovitch.

All the spirits of the North were subject to this King. There were the ghosts of Blacknight, the wraiths of the Icebergs, the witches of the Wind, and

the gnomes of the Frozen-earth. But the most powerful were the Glacier Giants. Their ponderous work was to crush and level the mountains, to push and spread the confines of Snowland. onwards and outwards till it covered the earth. Century after century they worked unstayed. Myriads of flowers. froze at their breath; primeval forests disappeared at their touch; weak animals died, and the strong became subject to the laws of Snowland.

Once a year Iceovitch held open court. Then his subjects from far and near came to do him homage. Now, it came to pass at one of these yearly meetings that the tardiest to arrive were the Glacier Giants. Iceovitch viewed them with anger and surprise, for their garment were torn, water streamed from their huge forms, and they tottered as aged men.

"What, ho!" exclaimed the King, "Be ye giants or weaklings?"

"Both," answered Olof, the biggest giant. "Know, oh, King, that a foe appears in the South whose retainers be armed with dazzling rays of wondrous power. When these smite us, our hearts turn to water and we dissolve in fear." Olof ceased. King Iceovitch rose from his throne, and his fury was awful to behold.

"Back, back, ye cravens, to your posts!" he shrieked. "Come to my aid, ye spirits of the North; blow, ye tempests, howl, ye winds, and announce the coming of Iceovitch."

Now in this wild tempestous host that surged around the King was one of whom I yet must speak. This was the princely son of Iceovitch, his heir and only child. He was a brave and handsome youth, golden-haired, with sparkling eyes and ruddy cheeks, garments of minever, and a helmet surmounted by a snowy owl. Mounted on the North Wind beside his grim and awful father rode this Prince, and behind swept the army, like a tornado of death.

While the army of Iceovitch descended from the North, a mighty horde from the South was advancing to meet them. The leader of this army was called Phoebuson. He was a fierce and fiery King with strong red hair and tawny eyes. His subjects were the spirits who dwell in tropic lands, great river-gods, forest dryads, spirits of heat and drought, of fog and rain. Following in this army's wake were millions. of animals, immense long-haired mastodons, monsters from the ocean depths, ferocious lions, crocodiles, serpents, wild horses, dogs, and numberless birds.

Who could describe the clash of the hosts of Iceovitch and Phoebuson? As if a great volcano burst in an Arctic sea-such was the meeting. The army of Iceovitch fought with all its strength; the army of Phoebuson yielded not an inch. The weeks passed; the months. passed; and still the armies strove with awful fury.

Now the tropic King had a daughter, a princess of wondrous loveliness, slender and graceful as a swaying palm. Orchids she wore woven in her dusky, waving tresses; roses and lilies hung in garlands from her slender waist. One day the son of Iceovitch looked into the velvet eyes of this daughter of the tropic King, and his heart stopped beating. From that time the love of fighting left him and his limbs grew weak.

When Iceovitch saw that his son fought not he upbraided him fiercely, and Phoebuson, discovering his daughter weeping, was sorely troubled. But no upbraiding would force the Prince to fight, no soothing dry the Princess' tears, and finally the distressed monarchs agreed to stay the battle. Thereupon the son of Iceovitch spoke and told his love, and the daughter of Phoebuson ceased weeping. Then the two great Kings conversed long together, and being wise old men they knew that nothing would stay the course of love,

and so the war closed with a wedding feast.

The Prince was given the southern part of Snowland, and the Princess was dowered with the northern tropics. And the two old Kings agreed that the new country should be ruled in this wise: For one season the son of Iceovitch reigns. Then the land is covered with snow, the rivers with ice, and the North Wind blows lustily. But the other season the fair Princess from the South holds sway. Her flowers then deck the sunny fields, soft zephyrs blow, the trees don all new leaves of green, and the young of every kind come forth and fill the world with sounds of joy.

Thus read the marriage contract of the son of Iceovitch and the daughter of the tropic King, and thus it stands to this day.

THE DEATH OF PAN

Translated from the German of Dr. Th. Kirchner by Mary Richards Gray

It was at the time that Christianity triumphed over the old gods of the Latin people. The troubled heavens and the dark sea sang a song of death and destruction. On a rock on the shores sat Pan, gazing upon the warring elements. The wind played with his locks; the sea, rolling up great foam-capped waves, seemed casting at the feet of the god forsworn by man its pearly treasures. Pan gave no heed; this was not the homage that he wished, and he stared listlessly out over the waters.

Suddenly there stood before him a monk, his dark eyes burning with religious enthusiasm.

"Away! away!" he cried, holding before him the cross. "Bow, Satan, before this sign at which all hell trembles."

The god bowed not. Resting his eyes sadly on the priest, he said: "Why do you torment me? Let me die in peace."

"Die?" cried the monk. "Die, thou

incarnation of Evil? Evil is immortal; thou art immortal!"

"Immortal?" replied Pan, smiling sadly. "Immortal-I was when you fell down and worshipped me, and taught men to pray as in the days that are gone."

"Pray to you?" and the monk smiled grimly. "Ha, Accursed One! I recognize you. Pray to you? Never, Devil, never!"

Then great Pan rose and stood proudly before the monk.

"I do not ask your devotion; I do not wish it. I go now to die with the last of my devotees. Have compassion on me, that compassion which your God teaches you to have for all. Let me die in peace out in my woods," and saying these words the great god disappeared.

The sea continued to roar wildly, dashing great waves on the rocks; it seemed bringing devastation to the blooming earth.

Where the blue Sabine hills tower above the luxuriant fields of Latium, on the edge of a wood stood a temple. Rank weeds grew over its roof; wild grape-vines, with waving branches and tendrils, half buried it; swallows nested in the great acanthus leaves carved on the capitals of its marble columns, and rose-bushes trailed their roots and blossoms over the old altar. Lone and solitary, it looked down upon the plain where beside a pleasant stream a band of reapers were at work, gayly singing as they harvested the sheaves of golden grain. An autumn day was drawing to its close; the sun was bathing the land in a flood of light when an old man wearily dragged himself up the hillside path to the temple. At the door he pushed aside the rank growth of weeds and vines that he might approach the altar, and with trembling hand strewed leaves on the sacred stone and placed thereon twigs and the dry branches of a tree; then he struck a fire, and as the